Note 112 — INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION.

Our present knowledge of those seas enables us to judge the question fairly and impartially between the two, and to decide that, when at the Islands of Orange, Barents had sailed from Kildin, their point of separation, further in a direct line, and made a more easterly longitude, than Nai and Tetgales had when at their furthest point on the eastern side of the Sea of Kara; and that, when there, he was quite as near as they were to the mouth of the Ob, and as near again to Cape Taimur; with the certainty, further, that from the former position a passage eastwards would at most times, if not always, be attended with fewer difficulties than from the latter. And it cannot be denied that Linschoten, in stating as he does on the title-page of his work, and at the commencement of his Introduction, without any qualification, that he “sailed through the Strait of Nassau to beyond the river Oby,” has certainly afforded a justification for De Veer’s imputation that he represented matters “vry wat breedt.”112