Note 186 — INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION.

There can be no doubt that their stay at this particular spot was a forced one. At the same time, when we bear in mind that, on the second voyage in the year preceding, Barents and his colleague, Harman Janszoon, proposed that two of the vessels should winter in the Sea of Kara; and that, on the fitting out of this third expedition, they took up “as many vnmarryed men as they could, that they might not be disswaded, by means of their wiues and children, to leaue off the uoyage;”186 it will not be unreasonable to infer that they went fully resolved and prepared, if obliged, to winter in those inhospitable regions.