Note 60 — INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION.

From these documents we gather two very remarkable facts. The first is, that, previously to the year 1584, an English vessel had crossed the Sea of Kara, and penetrated as far eastward as the mouth of the river Ob, where it was wrecked and its crew were murdered by the natives. The second is, that, at that time, the best way from the White Sea and the mouth of the Pechora by sea was deemed to be “by the isles of Vaygats and Nouva Zembla, and by the Land of Matpheoue, that is, by Matthewes Land”; this being manifestly the same as that which is described as “another way by Noua Zembla and Mattuschan Yar to Ob, more north-eastward” than that along the Russian coast, by Kanin Nos, the mouth of the Pechora, and thence through Yugorsky Shar (“Pet’s Strait”) and across the Gulf of Kara. And there can be no question that we have here a record of the discovery of the entrance into the Sea of Kara by the strait, at present known by the name of Matochkin Shar, in which the Russian pilot Rosmuislov passed the winter of 1768–1769, and through which he penetrated into that sea, though prevented by the ice from proceeding far from the eastern coast of Novaya Zemlya.60