A Collection of Documents on Spitzbergen and Greenland

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This volume (published in 1855) contains three narratives: Frederick Martens' description of a voyage to Spitzbergen in 1671, first translated into English and published in 1694 in a book of voyages dedicated to Samuel Pepys, then Secretary to the Admiralty; the Relation du Groeneland of Isaac de la Peyrre (published anonymously in French in 1663 and specially translated for this book); and the extraordinary account of the survival of eight Englishmen 'left by mischance in Green-land' for nine months in 1630.