The Gabriel was about to resume its journey west when it was surrounded by some twenty Baffin Island Inuit who paddled up in their kayaks to trade with the strange newcomers. They came aboard, exchanged goods and interacted freely with the sailors, even climbing and swinging on the ship’s rigging. Then five of Frobisher’s men rowed one of the natives ashore so he could fetch his kayak and pilot the Gabriel to the end of the fjord. But the rowboat disappeared around a point and the five crewmen were never seen again. Frobisher’s men seized one Inuit in a failed attempt to exchange prisoners. With a heavy heart, Frobisher set sail for England in late August carrying aboard a frightened Inuit, his kayak and the sparkling black rock.
In London, Frobisher was given a hero’s welcome. He had apparently reached Estotiland and navigated the Northwest Passage nearly all the way to the Pacific. The Asiatic features of the Inuit prisoner were clear evidence of how close he had come to Cathay. But the Inuit died soon after arriving in England, and in the course of the winter, interest shifted to the black rock picked up on Baffin Island. After consulting several assayers who confessed to seeing no particular value in it, Michael Lok informed the queen that an Italian goldsmith, Giovanni Battista Agnello, had concluded after careful examination that the rock was, in fact, very rich in gold.
A fever suddenly swept through the court of England. In March 1577, Lok launched the Company of Cathay and had no difficulty raising £5,125 to finance a much larger expedition across the ocean, with the Queen herself as lead investor (£1,000). Increasingly responsive to the pressure of her courtiers in favor of territorial claims overseas, Elizabeth asked Dee to prepare a series of policy papers laying out the legal and historical justification for acquiring lands in the New World.
Dee had already been at work for some time on the early history of English territorial expansion in the North Atlantic. Drawing inspiration from the Arthurian myths, he argued that King Arthur first conquered Orkney, Shetland, the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland back in the sixth century. He now added for good measure his conquest of Frislanda, Icaria, Drogio and the all-important Estotiland. Dee deliberately ignored the Viking voyages and the Norse settlements in the North Atlantic, insisting that the English were there first and since no one else had been there after them, it was natural and dutiful to claim those lands for the Crown. “This recovery,” Dee urged, “is speedily and carefully to be taken in hand.”
While the historical justification for an imperial claim on North America was rather far-fetched, the legal argument laid out by Dee was more cogent. After Christopher Columbus’s Atlantic crossing in 1492, Spain and Portugal had signed the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494): all lands discovered to the west of an imaginary line bisecting the ocean from north to south belonged to Spain, all those to the east belonged to Portugal. Dee challenged the new order, arguing that the right of possession rested on physical occupation and not merely on discovery (as stated in the Treaty of Tordesillas). Only by putting up fences, erecting buildings, tilling the soil—in other words by taking over the land and managing it—could one claim right of possession. Of course the English hadn’t yet discovered much territory at all in North America, let alone occupied the land. But it was important to establish the principle according to which the Queen could now possess what “the Spaniard occupieth not.”
Dee laid out his legal and historical arguments in four papers, which he presented to the Queen for her approval. In November 1577 he traveled to Windsor and had several private audiences with Elizabeth. “I declared to the Queen her title to Greenland, Estotiland, Friseland,” he wrote in his diary.
The essence of Dee’s four papers, which laid the foundation of the British Empire in North America, have long been known in their outline. But the actual documents were lost and it was not until they resurfaced on the market and were purchased by the British Library in 1976 that the role played in this story by the Zen voyages was fully revealed. Dee, as we know, had the original 1558 Zen volume in his library. And the least one can say is that he consulted it very closely, lifting long stretches of Nicolò the Younger’s narrative, often verbatim, in order to bolster his case for a British Empire in North America. Take, for example, this passage he borrowed from the fisherman’s tale:
Concerning a New Location for the island of Estotilant & the province of Drogio
Two noble Venetians, who almost two hundred years ago named not only Estotilant, but also Friseland, closer to us, and many other islands lying in the northern seas, made them known to our men by their writings. It was on their authority that we located Estotilant about a thousand miles, at least, to the west of Friseland. The inhabitants cultivate their fields and brew their beer. Their territory is rich in woods and groves. They fortify their many cities and castles with walls, and are familiar with ships and navigation. Many such inhabitants are to be found, stretching continuously well into the interior of the territory of Drogio and occupying various different regions. But a man traveling a long way on from Drogio itself, in a south-westerly direction (passing through the lands of cannibals and savage people who go always naked, however bitter the extremes of cold they must endure), comes to a region of a more temperate climate and to a people knowing the use of gold and silver and living in a civilized manner. Here, however, they sacrifice men to abominable idols in the temples of their cities, and afterwards feast ritually upon their flesh. To these fishermen, journeying for thirteen years at a stretch through a variety of unknown lands, and experiencing great kindness at the hands of more than twenty-five different rulers, the extent of those regions appeared so vast that they thought they had discovered a New World.
Not content to plunder the Zen narrative, he proceeded to edit and embellish it, evoking an idyllic world of gentle meadows, pleasant streams and rich farmland not unlike the English countryside. So keen was he to draw Elizabeth into the project that his paper on Estotiland read like something between a travel brochure and a real estate prospectus:
Certain Noteworthy things about the island of Estotilant
Estotilant is indeed a very splendid island which, with the province of Drogio over against it, … might with good reason draw wise men, and lovers of the Christian state, to visit and survey it. The island is a little smaller than Iceland. It is endowed with all things necessary for the easy sustenance of human life. In the middle of it there is a very high mountain from which there flow four very pleasant streams irrigating the whole island. It is ruled over by a king who lives in a very beautiful and very populous city, and who keeps in his household interpreters skilled in various tongues. In this city there was, two hundred years ago, a famous library containing various books in Latin; however, there were at that time scarcely two people in the whole island who understood that language. The islanders themselves are very ingenious and apply themselves to all the skills of the artificer, almost as well as we do; and the Venetian nobles were of the opinion that in ancient times they had had commercial dealings with men of our culture. They have a language of their own and write it with their own characters. They have mines of all metals, but are especially rich in gold. They collect Greenland skins, sulphur and pitch, and their merchants carry these home in their ships.
Preparations for Frobisher’s new journey proceeded at a quickened pace. The mission was still to explore the Northwest Passage all the way to the Pacific, but Lok and his stockholders instructed Frobisher not to push farther west until his men had mined an abundant cargo of black rocks. To the Gabriel and the Michael was added the Aid, a mighty two-hundred-ton workhorse. The total crew had grown to some 134 men, initially including a group of convicts who were supposed to be dropped off in Frislanda to take possession of the island for England (instead they were discharged at Harwich because there were too many men on board).
Frobisher reached Orkney in early June, sailed on to Shetland and continued north toward Iceland before turning westward. On July 4 they reached southern Greenland. “We made the land perfect,” wrote George Best, Frobisher’s lieutenant, in his acco
unt of the voyage, convinced, once again, that they had reached Frislanda since “the height being taken, we found ourselves to be on latitude 60˚.” “This Friseland,” he went on, “showeth a ragged and high land having the mountain almost covered with snow along the coast full of drift ice, and seemeth almost inaccessible and is thought to be an island in bigness not inferior to England.”
If Best had a copy of the Zen narrative close at hand, it must not have been an easy read for him because he goes on to say that Frislanda “appeareth by a description set out by two brethren, Nicholaus and Antonius Genoa, who being driven off from Ireland with a violent tempest, made shipwreck here, and were the first known Christians that discovered this land about three hundred years since.” Everything in this last sentence was factually wrong. It was two hundred years, not three; the Venetians were not the first known Christians to have landed there; they had not left from Ireland; their name was not Genoa. Best’s inaccuracy is not surprising: the Zen narrative had yet to be translated from Italian into English and the story of the Venetians’ voyages was known only in vague and misleading terms.
The map, on the other hand, was more easily available and was a crucial cartographic instrument on this second journey as well. “[The Zens] have in their sea cards set out every part [of Frislanda] and described the conditions of the inhabitants declaring them to be as civil and religious people as we. And for so much of this land as we have sailed alongst, comparing their card with the coast, we find it very agreeable.” In the face of such praise, it is no wonder the Zen map continued to hold sway among mariners and geographers.
In the end, Best’s account can be appreciated for what it actually is: not a description of Frislanda but a rare glimpse of the coast of Greenland, which had not been visited by outsiders since the Norse population had been snuffed out earlier in the sixteenth century. Frobisher’s men were enraptured by the scintillating “islands of ice” and marveled at their “great bigness and depth.” They licked the ice and were surprised to find it “fresh and sweet to the taste.” Wondering where these mountains of ice could possibly come from, Best ventured they might be “bred in the sounds thereabouts, or in some land near the Pole, and with the winds and tides are driven along the coast.”
One day the ships were “lying becalmed” and the men let fall a hook without any bait. “Presently, [they] caught a great fish called a hollibut which served the whole company for a day’s meat.” Five leagues off the shore they did more sounding and fished out “a kind of coral almost white, and small stones as bright as crystals.” Best concluded the land “may be found very rich and beneficial if it were thoroughly discovered.” The Inuit were no doubt lurking in the vicinity but they did not paddle up to the ships. “We saw no creature there but little birds.”
After four days and nights up and down the coast of southern Greenland they set a western course toward Frobisher Bay. Within a week they reached Baffin Island and took formal possession of the land, which they called Meta Incognita. After a futile attempt to find the five men lost the year before, Frobisher set up a mining camp on a small island off the outer coast of the bay, which he named Countess of Warwick, in honor of the wife of one of the main backers of the Company of Cathay. In two weeks the men excavated and loaded on board some two hundred tons of rocks. On August 22, before the cold set in, “we plucked down our tents,” wrote Best, “… gave a volley of shots for a farewell … and every man hasted homeward.”
In London, Michael Lok, Frobisher’s financial partner, was busy gathering funds for the next expedition as rival assayers were called in to take a look at the rocks brought back from Countess of Warwick Island. But the results were disappointing, and the expenses of transporting the rocks, building smelting furnaces and keeping rowdy crews on pay were bringing the company near financial collapse. According to Lok, Frobisher became so angry he “drew his dagger” against one of the assayers, a man by the name of Jonas Schutz. “He threatened to kill him if he did not finish his work out of hand, that he might set out again on the third voyage.”
Schutz never did find gold in those black rocks and neither did any of the other assayers hired by the company. But the disappointing results were kept secret and by the spring of 1578 the gold fever that had gripped investors was proving unstoppable. Frobisher was authorized to lead a fleet of fifteen vessels back across the Atlantic. He was to take possession of Frislanda along the way, then sail on to Estotiland (Meta Incognita, as it was henceforth referred to in British documents), mine for gold and establish a colony of roughly one hundred men. The frame house that was to serve as the first building of the new colony was loaded aboard the Dennis.
Frobisher sailed off the coast of Ireland and after fourteen days reached the western coast of Greenland, which he still thought was the western coast of Frislanda. “The general and other gentlemen went ashore,” Best wrote, “being the first known Christians that we have true notice of that ever set foot upon that ground.” True notice? Best was probably casting doubt on the stories of old Norse colonies in the North Atlantic to ensure the legitimacy of an English claim of possession. Frobisher immediately named the land West England and went on a brief exploration of the coast “[discovering] good harbours and certain little boats of that country”—presumably kayaks. His party came upon a village, which the Inuit had hastily abandoned, “much amazed at so strange a sight [of] creatures of human shape (supposing there had been no other world but theirs), so far in apparel, complexion and other things different from themselves.” The intruders looked into the tents and rummaged through the Inuit’s belongings, finding among other things “a box of small nails and certain ear rings, boards of fir tree well cut, with diverse other things artificially wrought”—a great variety of artifacts which had probably once belonged to the Norse Greenlanders.
For the first time, Best expressed doubts about Frislanda’s location on the Zen map, wondering whether “this West England, [which] promiseth good hope of great commodities and riches,” was not in some way attached to Greenland and possibly to the coast of North America “since people, apparel and boats are so [alike]. And multitude of islands of ice does argue [in favor of] a bay which joins the two.” But still, he did not question Frislanda’s existence.
The fleet began the crossing toward Baffin Island but was slowed down by thick ice and fog and a pod of whales. Strong winds then scattered the fleet. The Dennis struck an iceberg and sunk. The crew was saved but the frame house went down with the ship. Frobisher and some of the other vessels finally reached what he took to be the entrance of the Northwest Passage (Frobisher Bay) but was in fact a large, turbulent channel that eventually led him to a vast inner sea (Hudson Bay). He called the channel Mistaken Strait and sailed west for nine days, deep into the North American continent, before retracing his route and reconnecting with the rest of the fleet at Countess of Warwick Island.
The men were quickly set to work, excavating, transporting and loading tons of black boulders in the ships’ holds while the invisible Inuit watched from afar. The initial plan of establishing a mining colony—the first English colony in North America—was abandoned because the frame house had been lost at sea, together with most of the supplies for the winter. Frobisher nevertheless ordered the construction of a stone house at the top of the island, with a sweeping view of the low-lying islands scattered at the entrance of the bay. The purpose was to see how well it would survive the winter. Frobisher had it filled with a variety of objects, including mirrors and bells, which he thought might lure the Inuit and set the stage for improved relations the following year. After the ships had left, with their 1,200-ton cargo of rocks, the Inuit came ashore and picked their way through the remains of the mining operation. They demolished the house and took away the wood and nails and most of the objects Frobisher had left there for them.
Lok and his backers, meanwhile, had built in the town of Dartford, in the Thames Valley, the largest smelter in the country for the extraction of gold. As soon as
the fleet arrived, the rocks were unloaded and transported overland by horse-drawn carts. But of course no matter how hard everyone tried, and how much more money was poured into the project, the rocks did not turn into gold. In the end, most of them were thrown in the Thames, though several batches were used for construction in Dartford and still today a sparkling fragment of a rock from Countess of Warwick Island is occasionally spotted in an old village wall. The whole enterprise ended in a financial fiasco of colossal proportions. Poor Lok ended up in prison, Frobisher gave up his dream of navigating the Northwest Passage all the way to Cathay and the appetite for investing in overseas exploration disappeared for a while.
Dee, however, did not give up his efforts to establish a British Empire in North America. He found a useful new ally in Richard Hakluyt, an energetic propagandist with strong imperial yearnings. In 1582, four years after Frobisher’s last journey to North America, Hakluyt published Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America, a collection of travel writings that was really a manifesto to spur England back into action. Just like Dee had done twelve years earlier, Hakluyt marveled that England had not yet found “the grace to set fast footing in such fertile and temperate places as are yet left unspoiled” by the Spaniards and the Portuguese. “I conceive great hope that the time approacheth that we of England may share and partake in parts of America.”
Among the writings in his collection were those of Cartier, Verrazzano and other early explorers of North America. But the text he was especially proud to publish for the first time in English was Nicolò the Younger’s book on the Zen voyages (adding, wrongly, that the papers had been collected by Ramusio). Espousing Dee’s earlier view, Hakluyt concurred that “the testimony of Nicolaus and Anthonius Zeni that Estotiland is an island, doth yield no small hope” for building a British empire in North America.
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