Anglo-American Relations Before 1580 67
the man who came to Frobisher’s ship did so only after an
English hostage had been placed with the Eskimos. “And
this man . . . made great wondering at all things: and the
capitayn gave him to taste of the ship’s meat and drink and
wyne: but he made no countenance of Uking any. And he
[i.e., Frobisher] gave him . . . tryfles which he liked well and
toke them with him to land where he was delyvered and our
man received bak agayn. And hereby [surely the most non-
sequacious adverb in all literature] the captayn perceiving
these strange people to be of countenance and conversation
preceding of a nature geven to fyersnes and rapyne, and he
being not yet well prepared in his ship for defence, he set
sayle presently... to an other iland...
Or, according to Hall, “the East-side of this Island.”
Whichever it was, five Englishmen were lost there to the
natives. The laconic Hall treats even this catastrophe briefly:
“One of their company came into our boate, and we carried
him a boord, and gave him a Bell, and a knife: so the Cap-
taine and I willed five of our men to set him a shoare at a
rocke, and not among the company, which they came from,
but their Wilfulnesse was such, that they would goe to them,
and so were taken themselves, and our boate lost.” Again
Lok is far more circumstantial; he doubtless had much of his
information from Frobisher himself. “. . . Presently an otlιer
of those strange men went willingly in the capitayns bote
aboord the ship to see the same. . . . And he being in the
ship the capitayn had talke with him by signes in a bargayn
which they made that he should be their pylot through the
Streiets into the West Sea: to pas in his little bote rowing
before the ship thither: which he agreed onto, and made
signes that in two dayes rowing he should be there. . . . Yet
. . . the capitayn did wisely forsee that these strange people