Hearing this, the Dutch hastened to
secure him, and on April 4, 1609, he sailed from Amsterdam in a yacht of
eighty tons called the _Half Moon_ and shaped rather like one, manned by
a crew of twenty, half English and half Netherlanders, and John as
cabin-boy.
John was in such a state of bliss as a boy can know when sailing on the
venture of his dreams. His father had told him in confidence that as his
sailing orders were almost the same as the year before, he did not
expect to find the northern route to India in that direction. Failing
this the _Half Moon_ would look for it in the western seas. Of this plan
he had said nothing in Holland.
He found, as he had expected, that the arctic waters were choked with
ice, and turning southward he headed for the Faroe Isles. While in
Holland he had had a letter from Captain John Smith, who had explored
the regions about Chesapeake Bay. No straits leading to the western
ocean had been discovered there, and no Sea of Verrazzano. Captain
Smith's opinion was that if such a passage existed it would be somewhere
about the fortieth parallel. Explorations had already been made farther
north. Davis Strait had been discovered some years before by John Davis,
now dead. Martin Frobisher had found another strait leading northwest.
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