That was the way of his time; and when he needed
fireworks for his son's wedding (he made them himself, too), he sent
around to all the old cloisters and cathedral churches for the old
parchments they had. Heaven only knows what treasures that can never
be replaced went up in fire and smoke for that one night's fun.
King Christian founded a score of big trading companies to exploit
the East, taking care that their ships should have their bulwarks
pierced for at least six guns, so that they might serve as war-ships
in time of need. He sent one expedition after another to the waters
of Greenland in search of the Northwest Passage. It was on the
fourth of these, in 1619, that Jens Munk with two ships and
sixty-four sailors was caught in the ice of Hudson Bay and compelled
to winter there. One after another the crew died of hunger and
scurvy. When Jens Munk himself crept out from what he had thought
his death-bed, he found only two of them all alive. Together they
burrowed in the snow, digging for roots until spring came when they
managed to make their way down to Bergen in the smallest of the two
vessels. Jens Munk had deserved a better end than he got. He spun
his yarns so persistently at court that he got to be a tiresome
bore, and at last one day the King told him that he had no time to
listen to him.
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