Note 57 — INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION.

Heretofore your people haue bin at the said riuer of Obs mouth with a ship, and there was made shipwracke, and your people were slaine by the Samoeds, which thought that they came to rob and subdue them. The trees that grow by the riuer are firres, and a kinde of white, soft, and light firre, which we call yell. The bankes on both sides are very high, and the water not swift, but still and deepe. Fish there are in it, as sturgeons, and cheri, and pidle, and nelma, a dainty fish like white salmons, and moucoun, and sigi, and ster­lidi; but salmons57 there are none. Not farre distant from the maine, at the mouth of Ob, there is an island,58 whereon resort many wilde beasts, as white beares, and the morses, and such like. And the Samoeds tell vs, that in the winter season they oftentimes finde there morses teeth. If you would haue us trauell to seeke out the mouth of Ob by sea, we must goe by the isles of Vaygats and Noua Zembla, and by the land of Matpheoue, that is, by Matthewes Land. And assure thy selfe, that from Vaygats to the mouth of Ob by sea, is but a small matter to sayle. Written at Pechora, the yeare 7092, the twenty one of February.