The fleet with which this daring adventure was undertaken was a strangely insignificant one, consisting of three vessels which were even less in size than those with which Columbus had ventured on his great voyage.  Two of these were but of twenty tons burden each, and the third only of ten, while the aggregate crews numbered but thirty-five men.  With this tiny squadron, less in size than a trio of fishing-smacks, the daring adventurer set out to traverse the northern seas and face the waves of the great Pacific, if fortune should open to him its gates.

On the 11th of July, 1576, the southern extremity of Greenland was sighted.  It presented a more icy aspect than that which the Norsemen had seen nearly six centuries before.  Sailing thence westward, the land of the continent came into view, and for the first time by modern Europeans was seen that strange race, now so well known under the name of Eskimo.  The characteristics of this people, and the conditions of their life, are plainly described.  The captain “went on shore, and was encountered with mightie Deere, which ranne at him, with danger of his life.  Here he had sight of the Savages, which rowed to his Shippe in Boates of Seales Skinnes, with a Keele of wood within them.  They eate raw Flesh and Fish, or rather devoured the same:  they had long black hayre, broad faces, flat noses, tawnie of color, or like an Olive.”

His first voyage went not beyond this point.  He returned home, having lost five of his men, who were carried off by the natives.  But he brought with him that which was sure to pave the way to future voyages.  This was a piece of glittering stone, which the ignorant goldsmiths of London confidently declared to be ore of gold.

Frobisher’s first voyage had been delayed by the great difficulty in obtaining aid.  For his new project assistance was freely offered, Queen Elizabeth herself, moved by hope of treasure, coming to his help with a hundred and eighty-ton craft, the “Ayde,” to which two smaller vessels were added.  These being provisioned and manned, the bold navigator, with “a merrie wind” in his sails, set out again for the desolate north.

His first discovery here was of the strait now known by his name, up which he passed in a boat, with the mistaken notion in his mind that the land bounding the strait to the south was America, and that to the north was Asia.  The natives proved friendly, but Frobisher soon succeeded in making them hostile.  He seized some of them and attempted to drag them to his boat, “that he might conciliate them by presents.”  The Eskimos, however, did not approve of this forcible method of conciliation, and the unwise knight reached the boat alone, with an arrow in his leg.

But, to their great joy, the mariners found plenty of the shining yellow stones, and stowed abundance of them on their ships, deeming, like certain Virginian gold-seekers of a later date, that their fortunes were now surely made.  They found also “a great dead fish, round like a porepis [porpoise], twelve feet long, having a Horne of two yardes, lacking two ynches, growing out of the Snout, wreathed and straight, like a Waxe-Taper, and might be thought to be a Sea-Unicorne.  It was reserved as a Jewell by the Queens’ commandment in her Wardrobe of Robes.”