p. 75: Barents did all he could to keep up the morale of his flock. By the flickering bear-oil lamp he read them Mendoza’s History and Description of the Great Chinese Empire. Seated in a circle around the smoking fire, their backs frozen, the men listened to their chief, the ‘scholar’ who would one day get them out of the spot they were in. [1596]
David H. Stam's Anthologies of the Reading Experience