becoming very foggy, and the wind constantly to the south-east, after six days of abortive efforts to proceed, they set sail for England.

In a second voyage this intrepid adventurer dismissed two of his ships off Cape Farewell, to proceed northward between Greenland and Iceland, in search of a passage; whilst he should further explore the promising outlets he had discovered between Cumberland Island and Frobisher's Archipelago. In long 70° W., and lat. 66° 33', he found a clear coast, which was afterwards discovered to be that of a considerable island; and passing a group of islands, the weather being very hot, they were singularly enough troubled with a fly which is called muskyto, for they did sting very greevously.' They now found open sea in a western course of fifty leagues, and doubled a cape in lat. 66° 19′, which brought them down in part into Hudson's Bay. They coasted the western side of Labrador for some time; but on the 11th of September, the weather being stormy and unpropitious, they again left for England, having a perfect hope of the passage, finding a mighty great sea, passing between two lands west.' Davis, says in a letter to his friend at home, I have now experience of much of the north-west part of the world. I have brought the passage to that likelihood, as that I am assured it must bee in one of four places, or els not at all.' We seem destined to indulge the triumph of hope over experience' (as Dr. Johnson said on a different occasion) upon this subject.

A third voyage, undertaken in the year 1587, conducted our navigator to the highest point of northern latitude that had ever been reached, that of 72° 12′, on the west coast of Greenland, which they now called London Coast, and gave the name of Cape Saunderson to its most western promontory. The strait between this and the opposite shore of America seems from this circumstance to have taken Davis's name. In the rest of the voyage he passed through Cumberland Straits, round by a group of islands at the bottom, and came home through Lumley's Inlet, or Frobisher's Strait, without making any new discovery of consequence.

From the western coast of Mexico, the Spanish government sent several early expeditions, to discover the Strait of Anian. This celebrated strait, which glittered for several centuries before the eyes of adventurers, has involved geographers in much perplexity, and been considered even as wholly inexplicable. The late Mr. Murray was convinced that it originated in a very different quarter of the world from that to which navigators have been accustomed to refer it. In the earliest maps,' he says, 'Anian is delineated as the most eastern country of Asia, and it occupies the position of Cachmehina, which has always, with the natives, borne the title of Anam. To understand how the separating Strait of Asia and America could be placed here, we must attend to the train of ideas which prevailed at that infant era of geographical knowledge. The American Islands, when first discovered, were still viewed as part of the East Indies, in search of which the voyage of Columbus was undertaken. Even after they were proved to

belong to a great mass of continent, that continent was supposed to be attached to, and to form the eastern boundary of Asia. Under the influence of these impressions, it is easy to conceive how the early East India navigators, on coming to Anam or Cochin China, where the coast first decidedly changes from east and west to south and north, might imagine that they were now between the two continents, and would soon come to the division between them, which might be named by anticipation the Strait of Anian. In one of the maps in the king's library this strait is represented as running up across the whole breadth of the two continents. The progress of navigation proved that no such Strait existed here; but still the idea was rooted in the minds of geographers, and they transferred it farther and farther north, till they reached the frozen extremities of Asia. It is not probable, however, that this, impression was founded even upon the most remote tradition of Behring's Straits. The derivation above given seems confirmed by the circumstance that the idea of the Strait of Anian was always combined, not with that of a bleak and wintry passage, but of a smiling and fertile region, and even of gold; which last association wonderfully heightened its empire over the imagination of mankind.'

The further efforts of the Spanish government to explore the north-west coast are concealed by that mysterious obscurity which it studiously throws over its proceedings. The only other remarkable early voyage is that professed to have been made by Juan de Fuca, by birth a Greek. The Spaniards deny all knowledge of him; but one Douglas, an Englishman, who met him accidentally at Venice, took down his narrative, to the following purport: that, after passing the 49° of latitude, he had entered the Strait of Anian, and having sailed for twenty days through a long and winding channel, and seen people on the shore covered with the skins of beasts, he had emerged into the North Sea, when, conceiving himself to have accomplished the object of his voyage, he returned. This narrative was accounted a fable, till Meares and Vancouver, in tracing the north-west coast of America, discovered Vancouver's Island, separated from the continent by a long and narrow channel, precisely similar to that through which Fuca described himself to have passed. The aspect of the country and natives, and the passage with the open sea, precisely corresponded. It became evident, therefore, that the old captain had merely committed an error of judgment when, in sailing through this channel, he supposed himself to be sailing between Asia and America.

We now find the Dutch entering the field of enterprise. In 1594 William Barentz made his first voyage easterly as far as Waygatz, then along the western coast of Nova Zembla to lat. 77° 25'. The following year he undertook a second voyage, but did not reach Nova Zembla till the 17th August, when the weather being misty, melancholie, and snowie, and the ice impassible,' they returned to the westward, and arrived at the Maes in the close of the year.

A third voyage of Barentz is more interesting. The ships, on this occasion, after sailing among

much ice, discovered, 9th June, Bear (since called Cherry) Island; and, proceeding northerly, were the first who arrived at Spitzbergen, along the western coast of which they had advanced, on the 19th, as high as 80° 11', opposite what is now called Hakluyt's Headland. Returning to the southward, Barentz made for the coast of Nova Zembla; doubled the northern extremity; and then was compelled, by the ice and bad weather, to seek for refuge in a bay, which he called Ice Haven: here he passed a 'cold, comfortlesse, darke, and dreadful winter,' in about the seventy-sixth parallel. The ship was wholly wrecked, and the surviving part of the crew, fifteen in number, left this spot the following year in two open boats; and, after forty days of the greatest fatigue, famine, and cold, in which Barentz and two others died, they reached Kilduin in Lapland, a distance of upwards of 1000 miles from the bay.

The Russia and Turkey Companies fitted out two vessels for voyages in these regions, in 1602 and 1606, under the respective commands of George Weymouth and John Knight: James Hall, a Danish commander, was also despatched hither four successive times by his government; but no discoveries worth recording were made by any of these expeditions. The honor of making the next advance in north-western geography belongs to Henry Hudson, the enterprising navigator who gave his name to the bay, or inland sea, in which Hudson's Strait terminates, and also made no fewer than four voyages after a passage to India by the Polar regions. In the last of them, on which he sailed from the Thames, 17th April, 1610, his vessel was fitted out at the private expense of Sir John Wilstenholm and Sir Dudley Digges, whose names he inscribed on two prominent points of his chart, at the north-west extremity of Labrador. After reaching these by a western course through Frobisher's Strait, the land winding southward, he found an open sea; and his journey now abruptly terminates, a mutiny having arisen in the crew, who thrust their commander, with his son and seven others, into an open boat, in which they are all supposed to have perished. It seems a feeble tribute, on the part of his country, to this noble seaman, to have transferred his name only to the scene of his murder, and to have suffered the circumstances of his death to have been passed over, as they were, with a very insufficient enquiry after the perpetrators of it. He was the first of these voyagers who observed the inclination or dip of the magnetic needle.

Sir Thomas Button was the first navigator who reached the eastern coast of America, on the west side of Hudson's Bay. This he accomplished in 1612, following Hudson's route to Cape Digges, and then steering directly west across the bay. On the 18th of August he entered Nelson's River, on which the principal factory of the Hudson's Bay Company has since been established, and here he secured his vessels until the following spring, finding plenty of game in the neighbourhood. Steering north in the spring of 1613 he reached Southampton Island in lat. 65°, and having then coasted the whole of the west side of the bay, returned home.

W. Baffin, an English adventurer in the same regions in 1616, has given name to another very important bay to the north of Davis's Strait. He coasted the whole north-eastern shore of America to a higher latitude than had ever before been reached; but, leaving very imperfect observations of the points of discovery which he made, and no one longitude, each succeeding geographer,' as Mr. Barrow observes, has drawn Battin's Bay on his chart as best accorded with his fancy.' In his latitudes, however, Baffin was tolerably accurate for the age in which he lived; and the return of Captain Ross, from his expedition in this direction, has confirmed the whole of Baffin's general outline.

In 1631 Luke Fox entered Hudson's Bay by the usual route, and explored Sir Thomas Roe's Welcome, a strait between the eastern coast of America and Southampton Island. He made the important observation that a tide came down from the north, contrary to that general tide which came in by the straits. He traced also a considerable part of the channel on the eastern side of the great island of Southampton, which captain Parry has since called, after him, the Fox Channel. Fox sailed along a considerable part of its eastern coast; but, when he found this to fail him, he began to think he had made a scurvie voyage of it,' and called the point of land he finally reached Foxe's Farthest."

Captain James, an adventurer fitted out the same year with Fox by the merchants' of Bristol, was overtaken by winter in the southern part of Hudson's Bay, where he endured a series of sufferings from cold, the narrative of which tended much to chill the public ardor for future discoveries.

Forts and factories now began to be erected on the western coast of Hudson's Bay, for the protection of the fur trade, of which the company of that name had obtained a grant from Charles L., and projects of discovery were abandoned for the more certain results of commerce. This company has been accused of a general unfriendliness to scientific projects, or a jealousy of discoveries that might interfere with their monopolies in these regions; and in the early part of their history these dispositions were but too evident. Latterly their conduct has been more liberal; but the geographical information with which they have favored the world, compared with their means and advantages for exploring some of the most interesting parts of North America, has been very small.

In 1719 one of their servants at Nelson's River having heard, in his intercourse with the Indians, of a rich copper-mine northward, which was situated on the banks of a navigable river or inlet, came to England to solicit the directors to fit out two vessels of discovery for the purpose of searching for it, and exploring the bay. Their charter was partly held on their making efforts 'to discover a new passage to the South Sea,' a stipulation of which Knight did not fail to remind them; independently of which it would appear that his troublesome zeal' would have obtained no assistance. He ultimately procured two vessels, which sailed from Gravesend in 1720, but never returned. Captain Scroggs, in

shortly after, in lat. 69° 14′, he assumes that he had reached the Arctic Ocean, or rather would appear to wish the reader to think so, while he avoids expressly asserting it. Here he saw a number of whales, which his guides assured him were the principal food of the Esquimaux, none of whom appeared, though vestiges of their habitations were seen. Mr. Mackenzie encamped on an island at the mouth of the river, which he called Whale Island, for two days, yet never tasted the water it appears, and leaves the principal point of his journey, like Mr. Hearne, most lamely drawn.

This gentleman, in a second journey on the Unjiga, or Peace River, in 1792, reached the Stony or Rocky Mountains, in a south-west direction, and, having with some difficulty transported his canoe across them, embarked on a branch of the Oregan, Colombia, or Great River of the west, which is here about 200 yards wide, and which he successfully pursued to one of the numerous inlets of the Pacific Ocean, in lat. 52° 20′. He afterwards travelled to the Pacific by land.

In the interim the honorable Daines Barrington had (in 1773) presented to the Royal Society a series of papers on the practicability of approaching the North Pole, and the president and council of that society made application to the Admiralty, to send out a ship or ships, to try how far navigation might be practicable in that quarter. The Racehorse and Carcass bombs were accordingly prepared, and the command given to captains Constantine Phipps and Lutwidge. Sailing from the Nore on the 10th of June, they passed along the western coast of Spitzbergen, and advanced to latitude 80° 48', in sight of the Seven Islands; here they were beset in the ice on the 1st of August, and on the 10th, after being forced through it by a northeast wind, they proceeded to the southward, and arrived on the 25th of September at the Nore.

Captain Cook, it is well known, was employed in this direction on his last voyage, having under his command the Resolution and Discovery. Previous to the sailing of this expedition, an act was passed for granting the reward of £20,000 for the discovery of any northern passage' by sea, between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the reward of £5000 to any ship which should approach the North Pole within a degree. Cook left England in July 1776; entered Behring's Strait the 9th of August, 1779; and on the 17th reached lat. 70° 41' N., where he saw the highest point of America surrounded with ice; which he therefore named Icy Cape, in lat. 70° 29′, long. 198° 20′. The ice drifting down towards the ships, and the weather becoming foggy, he now stood to the southward; and, as the season was advanced, he determined to pass the winter at the Sandwich Islands, where he was killed, and the expedition returned home without accomplishing any further discovery in this direction.

We ought now to notice the successive Russian voyages along the northern coast of Asia. Between 1734 and 1738 lieutenants Moroviof, Malgyn, and Skurakof, succeeded in proceeding from Archangel to the Bay of Obe; and, in the last year, Offzin and Koskelef reached the mouth

of the Yenisei, from that bay. In 1735 lieutenant Prontshistshef set out in the contrary direction from the Lena, but was stopped by Cape Cavero Vostochnoi, which is the single spot on this coast which has never been passed. From the Lena eastward to the Kowyma, the voyage has frequently been performed, and Shalauroff, in 1671, succeeded in reaching the Shelatskoi Noss, but could not double it; the only instance of its having been passed is that of Deshnef, who, as far back as the year 1648, penetrated to Anadyr, from the Kowyma, through Behring's Strait.

The only English Voyages to the Polar Regions, between that of Cook and those of the year 1818, were the unfortunate ones of Mr. Charles Duncan, a master of the navy, despatched by the Hudson's Bay Company, in 1790, to join a sloop of the name of Churchill, then in Hudson's Bay; he soon discovered that his crew were so utterly averse from the enterprise, and set up so formidable an opposition to his proceeding, that he deemed it prudent to return home. On this the governors fitted out a strong ship, the Beaver, with which Mr. Duncan commenced his second voyage, and wintered in Churchill River till the 15th of July, when he proceeded to Chesterfield Inlet; but here again his crew mutinied, encouraged by an officer second in command, and thus ended this attempt.

In

Before entering upon our late expeditions, we must notice further efforts of Russia in this direction. Since the general peace she has been prosecuting discoveries in every part of the globe. In the southern ocean her ships have penetrated as far as the seventieth parallel, and discovered, it is said, islands which had escaped the eye of captain Cook: they boast of having rounded the Sandwich land of that celebrated navigator; and of having ascertained that the Southern Shetland consists only of numerous groups of small islands. But more of this hereafter. They have sent land expeditions into the unknown regions of Tartary, behind Thibet, and into the interior of the north-western side of North America. Men of science have been commissioned to explore the northern boundaries of Siberia, and to determine points, on that extensive coast, hitherto of doubtful position. February, 1821,' says the Quarterly Reviewer, Baron Wrangel, an officer of great merit, and of considerable science, left his head-quarters on the Nishney Kolyma, to settle, by astronomical observations, the position of Shalatzkoi-Noss, or the north-east cape of Asia, which he found to lie in lat. 70° 50′ N. considerably lower than it is usually placed on the maps. Having arranged this point, he undertook the hazardous enterprise of crossing the ice of the polar sea on sledges drawn by dogs, in search of the land said to have been discovered, in 1762, to the northward of the Kolyma. He travelled directly north, eighty miles, without perceiving any thing but a field of interminable ice, the surface of which had now become so broken and uneven as to prevent a further prosecution of his journey. He had gone far enough, however, to ascertain that no such land could ever have been discovered.'

Count Romanzoff, the able minister of the late emperor Alexander, had intended to equip an expedition to explore the north-west passage by Hudson's Bay or Davis's Strait: but, on finding that preparations were making in England to attempt it by that route, he determined on prosecuting the discovery from the eastward. For this purpose he caused a ship of 180 tons to be built of fir, at Abo, to which he gave the name of Rurick. Her establishment consisted of lieutenant Kotzebue, lieutenant Schischmareff, two mates, M. A. Von Chamisso, of Berlin, naturalists, Dr. Eschholz, surgeon, M. Choris, painter, and twenty men; and, to the credit of the commander, it may be mentioned that, after a navigation of three years in opposite climates, and in so small a vessel, he lost one man only, who left the Baltic in a consumption. The Rurick sailed from Plymouth in October 1815; and on the 28th of March had reached Easter Island, Some of the natives swam off to them with yams, taro roots, and bananas, which they gave in exchange for bits of iron hoop. As the boats approached the shore, they began to assemble in great numbers, and though unarmed, and apparently desirous of the strangers landing, they were thought to exhibit a hostile appearance; and the boats were repelled from the shore by volleys of stones. This conduct, so contrary to their former practice, was afterwards explained to lieutenant Kotzebue, at the Sandwich Islands, as arising from the conduct of an American, who kidnapped a party of the natives a short time before on board his schooner called the Nancy, from New London.

On the 16th of April lieutenant Kotzebue descried a small island, probably the Dog Island of Schouten, but which, differing twenty-two miles in latitude from that given by him, Kotzebue calls Doubtful Island: and on the 19th they discovered another small island, covered with majestic cocoa-nut trees, to which he gave the name of Romanzoff. It had no inhabitants; but boats and deserted huts were visible. This new discovery so delighted our navigator, that, inconsiderable as he felt it to be, I would not,' he says, have resigned the pure and heartfelt joy which it gave me for the treasures of the world.' On the 22d they fell in with another island, in 14° 41' S., long. 144° 59′ 20′′ W., which was also considered as a new discovery; the truth however is, that they all belong to those groups whose numbers are not yet ascertained, but which are known by the name of King George's and Palliser's Islands, discovered by Cook; to which also belong what he is pleased to call Rurick's Chain, and Krusenstern's Island.

close in with St. Lawrence Island, where they had some communication with the natives, who resembled the people whom Cook found on the shores of Norton Sound, and the Aleutian Islands; and were living in tents made of the ribs of whale, covered with the skin of the morse. Their mode of salutation was like that of the Esquimaux of Baffin's Bay; each of them,' says Kotzebue, embraced me, rubbed his nose hard against mine, and ended his caresses by spitting on his hands, and wiping them several times over my face.'

On the 30th of July they were on the American shore, between Cape Prince of Wales and Garozdeff's Islands, which being found to consist of four instead of three, as laid down in Cook's chart, induced Kotzebue to conjecture that the fourth must have subsequently risen out of the sea, 'otherwise,' says he, Cook or Clarke would have seen it.' At all events, he looked on it as a new discovery, and named it after Ratmaroff, who had been Krusenstern's first lieutenant on his voyage to Japan. To the northward of Cape Prince of Wales is a long low island, covered with luxuriant verdure, and apparently well inhabited: but on landing they found only dogs in the houses, which had mud walls; the interior was cleanly and convenient, and divided into a number of apartments by boarded partitions; the floors, raised three feet from the ground, were also of wood, which is supplied by the vast quantity of drift brought by the northeast current from the mouths of the rivers of America to the southward of Behring's Straits, and thrown on the shores of the straits. Beyond this island was a deep inlet, running eastward into the continent. On entering this bay two boats were observed, of the same kind as those made use of in the Aleutian Islands. The appearance of the people in them was extremely filthy and disgusting, and their countenances had an expression of fierceness. To this bay, which was not examined, Kotzebue gave the name of his lieutenant, Schischmareff; to the island that of admiral Saritscheff.

Proceeding northerly they met with two light boats, the people in which were extremely savage, and, uttering the most piercing cries, threatened to hurl their lances: pointing muskets at them had no effect. The land continued low, and trended more to the eastward, when on the 1st of August the entrance into a broad inlet was discovered, into which the current ran rapidly. The interior of this great inlet is the undoubted discovery of Kotzebue.

6

'I cannot,' says he, describe the strange sensation which I now experienced, at the idea that I perhaps stood at the entrance of the so long sought north-east passage, and that fate had chosen me to be the discoverer. I felt my heart oppressed; and at the same time an impatience which would not let me rest, and was still increased by the perfect calm. To satisfy myself, at least, by going on shore, and clearly observing from some eminence the direction of the coast, I had two boats got ready, at which our naturalists were highly delighted. We set out by two o'clock in the afternoon; the depth regularly decreased: half a mile from shore we had still five