BAFFIN BAY
Sir Humphrey Gilbert—Sir Martin Frobisher—His first voyage—The
fateful stone—First meeting with the Eskimos—The Cathay
Company—Second voyage—Third voyage—Frobisher builds a fort—The
ships among the floes—Captain Hall finds the Frobisher
relics—Adrian Gilbert—John Davis—His voyages and dealings with the
Eskimos—Reaches and names Sanderson's Hope—The Traverse
Book—William Baffin—His first voyage to Greenland—His fourth and
fifth voyages—Discovers Baffin Land—Discovers Baffin Bay—Smith
Sound—Jones Sound—Lancaster Sound—Baffin's farthest north—John
Ross and Parry verify his discoveries.
In 1566 Humphrey Gilbert—who was as near to heaven by sea as by
land—petitioned Queen Elizabeth for privileges in regard to discoveries
"by the North-west to Cataia" as an alternative to a petition he, in
conjunction with Anthony Jenkinson, had presented the previous year for
a voyage by the north-east. He received no answer; but ten years
afterwards, in support of this unanswered petition, he published his
_Discourse of a Discovery for a New Passage to Cataia_. This met with
approval, and led, with little delay, to the expedition under the Martin
Frobisher who, among other noteworthy services, commanded the _Triumph_
in the Armada fight to such good purpose that he was one of the five
distinguished men knighted by Howard in mid-channel after the battle off
the Isle of Wight.
Frobisher was a good seaman—but no mineralogist. Mainly at the expense
of Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, and under the business management of
that old seafarer, Michael Lock, of the Muscovy Company, he left
Blackwall on the 7th of June, 1576, in the _Gabriel_ of twenty-five
tons, accompanied by the _Michael_ of twenty tons—which deserted and
returned as soon as difficulties arose—and a ten-ton pinnace, which
ended by foundering off Greenland. All told, the expedition numbered
thirty-five, of whom the _Gabriel_ carried eighteen; and with these the
voyage through the Arctic Ocean was to be made to China.
Leaving the Shetlands at her top speed of a league and a half an
hour—which her master, good Christopher Hall, proudly recorded—the
_Gabriel_ sighted Cape Farewell on the 11th of July. Two days afterwards
she was thrown on her beam-ends in a storm, and was rapidly filling with
water flowing in at her waist when she was relieved by the loss of her
fore-yard and the cutting away of her mizen-mast. Rounding the cape,
steering westward when he could among the floating ice, Frobisher
reached a high headland at the south-east end of what is now Frobisher
Bay, which he named Queen Elizabeth Foreland. A few days afterwards
Hall, out in a boat seeking a way through the ice for the ship, landed
on what they called Hall's Island, and, noticing a fog coming on, left
hurriedly, snatching up, as specimens of the plants, a few grasses and
flowers, and, as a rock specimen, a heavy black stone picked up
haphazard on the beach. The grass faded, the flowers perished, and the
fateful stone remained.
[Illustration: SIR MARTIN FROBISHER]
For fifty leagues Frobisher sailed north-westward into the bay, thinking
it to be a strait with Asia on the right hand and America on the left.
He landed at what he called Butcher's Island, saw "mightie deere which
ranne at him and hardly he escaped with his life in a narrow way where
he was faine to use defence and policie," and from a hill-top "perceived
a number of small things fleeting in the sea afarre off whyche hee
supposed to be porposes or seales or some kind of strange fishe but
coming nearer he discovered them to be men in small boates made of
leather," who only just failed in capturing his boat before he reached
it. Subsequent conferences with the Eskimos ended in his losing the boat
with five men who had gone ashore to trade; and finally, having lifted
single-handed one of the interesting natives, kayak and all, into the
_Gabriel_, he made sail for home.
When Lock went aboard on the ship's arrival there were no riches from
Cathay, nothing worth mentioning beyond the Eskimo—who soon died—the
kayak and paddle, and "the fyrste thynge found in the new land," the
black stone. He carried away the stone, after chipping off a few
fragments for the friends around, and after a week or two's
consideration sent some of it to the Mint to be assayed. The report was
not as he expected; the "saymaster" was of opinion that it was
marcasite, that is, iron pyrites. Not satisfied, Lock sent some to
another expert, who also said it was pyrites. Then he tried a third man,
who could find no gold in it. And then he tried a fourth—this time an
Italian—who gave him the answer he wanted: "A very little powder of gold
came thereout."
Lock sent him some more, telling him frankly that three other assayers
"could find no such thing therein," but again the Italian was equal to
the occasion. "The xviii day of January," writes Lock, "he sent me by
his mayde this little scrap of paper written, No. 1, hereinclosed; and
thereinclosed the grayne of gold, which afterward I delivered to your
majesty." For the Queen had become interested in the wonderful stone
which was the talk of the town, its value increasing at every recital
until many believed, as Sir Philip Sidney seems to have done, that it
was "the purest gold unalloyed with any other metals."
Lock was not the man to let such excellent advertisement be lost, and
forthwith he projected the Cathay Company for which the charter was
obtained from the Crown on St. Patrick's Day, 1577. Lock was named as
Governor for six years with remuneration "for ever" of one per cent on
all goods imported; Frobisher was named as Captain by sea and Admiral of
the ships and navy of the Company for life with a yearly stipend and one
per cent, like Lock, on all goods the Company brought in. Queen
Elizabeth—notwithstanding the report from the Mint—headed the list of
shareholders with £1000; and Burghley, Howard, Leicester, Walsingham,
Hunsdon, Sidney, even Gresham, subscribed for shares in this remarkable
company.
To bring home more of the "golden ore," a new expedition was entered
upon at once, and on the 26th of May, Whit-Sunday as it happened,
Frobisher started on his second voyage. He had three vessels, the _Aid_
of two hundred tons, lent him from the Royal Navy, and the _Gabriel_ and
_Michael_ as before, and one hundred and twenty officers and men, of
whom thirty were miners and other landsmen, and, in addition, six
condemned criminals whom he was to land in Greenland as colonists but
put ashore at Harwich instead.
To the new land—named by the Queen Meta Incognita, "the unknown limit of
the outward course"—he made his way without much adventure. Landing on
Hall's Island, he sought for more stone but could find not so much as a
piece as big as a walnut; for Hall, who was again with him as master,
had apparently lighted, in the one sample, on the whole of its mineral
wealth. This disappointment, however, was forgotten in the finding of
occasional patches of pyrites on the mainland and other islands which in
due course were visited. Thirty leagues up the bay a landing was made on
what was called Countess of Warwick's Island, where more ore was found
and a fort called Best's Bulwark was built. That was Frobisher's
farthest on this voyage, and thence he sailed on the 24th of August,
bringing with him two hundred tons of pyrites, and, as a present for the
Queen, a horn two yards long, wreathed and straight, which he had found
in the nose of a dead narwhal.
The ore was received with rejoicings. Some of it was deposited in
Bristol Castle, some in the Tower of London under four locks, but there
was not enough of it; and as there were then, as now, no furnaces in
England capable of getting gold out of marcasite, a new expedition was
despatched while the furnaces were being prepared. This time the
enterprise was to be on a very different scale. Frobisher was given a
fleet of fifteen vessels, Drake's old ship, the _Judith_, amongst them,
the _Aid_, as before, being the flagship. He was to bring home two
thousand tons of mineral and find other mines, if he could, besides
taking out a colony of a hundred persons to settle in Meta Incognita,
for whom the materials of a wooden house were among the miscellaneous
cargo.
The fleet left Harwich on the 31st of May, 1578. A landing was made in
the south of Greenland, which Frobisher named West England and took
possession of, his point of departure from there being called by him,
"from a certain similitude," Charing Cross! Soon he was among the ice
floes. One of the ships was driven on to a floe and sank with some of
the materials for the wooden house. Then followed a storm in which most
of the ships had a terrible experience. "Some," says Captain Best of the
_Ann Frances_, the chronicler of the voyage, "were so fast shut up and
compassed in amongst an infinite number of great countreys and ilands of
ise, that they were fayne to submit themselves and their ships to the
mercie of the unmercifull ise, and strengthened the sides of their ships
with junckes of cables, beds, masts, planckes, and such like, which
being hanged overboord, on the sides of their shippes, mighte the better
defend them from the outrageous sway and strokes of the said ise. But as
in greatest distresse, men of best value are best to be discerned, so it
is greatly worthy commendation and noting with what invincible mind
every captayne encouraged his company, and with what incredible labour
the paynefull mariners and poore miners (unacquainted with such
extremities) to the everlasting renoune of our nation, dyd overcome the
brunt of these so great and extreame daungers; for some, even without
boorde uppon the ise, and some within boorde, uppon the sides of their
shippes, having poles, pikes, peeces of timber and ores in their hands,
stood almost day and night, without any reste, bearing off the force,
and breaking the sway of the ise, with suche incredible payne and perill
that it was wonderfull to behold, which otherwise no doubt had striken
quite through and through the sides of their shippes, notwithstanding
our former provision; for planckes of timber, of more than three ynches
thick, and other things of greater force and bignesse, by the surging of
the sea and billow, with the ise were shevered and cutte in sunder at
the sides of oure ships, that it will seeme more than credible to be
reported of. And yet (that which is more) it is faythfully and playnely
to be proved, and that by many substantiall witnesses, that our shippes,
even those of greatest burdens, with the meeting of contrary waves of
the sea, were heaved up betweene islandes of ise a foote welneere out of
the sea above their watermarke, having their knees and timbers within
boorde both bowed and broken therewith."
To add to the difficulties of the voyage Frobisher lost his way, and
entered what he called the Mistaken Streight—now designated Hudson
Strait—through which he might have found his way to Cathay, had he been
so minded; but recognising that he was on the wrong road he returned and
reached his mining district at the end of July. While the ore was being
gathered in, Best ventured into the upper part of Frobisher Bay as far
as the Gabriel Islands—the only exploring work that was done—and early
in September the fleet departed on the homeward voyage.
Frobisher had left one unmistakable indication of his visit behind him.
On Countess of Warwick Island he had built a house of lime and stone,
and "the better," says Best, "to allure those brutish and uncivill
people to courtesie, againste other times of our comming, we left
therein dyvers of our countrye toyes, as bells and knives, wherein they
specially delight, one for the necessarie use, and the other for the
great pleasure thereof. Also pictures of men and women in lead, men a
horsebacke, lookinglasses, whistles and pipes. Also in the house was
made an oven, and breade left baked therein, for them to see and taste.
We buried the timber of our pretended forte, with manye barrels of
meale, pease, griste, and sundrie other good things, which was of the
provision of those whyche should inhabite, if occasion served. And
insteade therof we fraight oure ships full of ore, whiche we holde of
farre greater price."
Here we part from the Cathay Company. The inevitable trouble came with
the discovery that, practically, the only gold the ore would yield was
that put in as an "additament" by the Italian. A very thick cloud rolled
over Frobisher, who, like Lock, seems to have believed in the
genuineness of the affair all through; but soon his country had need of
him and he came to the front again in so worthy a manner that little
more was heard of his connection with this company that failed.
[Illustration: ESKIMO AWAITING A SEAL]
To complete the story. In 1861 (say three hundred years afterwards)
Captain Hall—hearing among the Eskimos how numerous white men had
arrived first in two, then three, then a great many ships, how they had
killed several natives and taken away two, how five of the white men had
been captured, and how these had built a large boat and put a mast in
her and sailed away to death when the water was open—went to Kod-lun-arn
(White Man's Island) and there found the house of lime and stone as
described, and traces of the diggings, and many relics among which he
made the collection presented by him to the British Government.
In the year 1583, when Sir Humphrey Gilbert, whose _Discourse_ gave so
great a stimulus to Arctic discovery, founded St. John's,
Newfoundland—the first English colony in America—a patent was granted by
Queen Elizabeth to his brother Adrian "of Sandridge in the county of
Devon," as one of the colleagues of the Fellowship for the Discovery of
the North-West Passage. At this Sandridge—on the east of the Dart,
bounded on three sides by the river, some two miles above Dartmouth—was
the home of the three Gilberts (John, Humphrey, and Adrian), whose
mother by a second marriage became the mother of Carew and Walter
Raleigh; and here, about 1550, of a family also owning property in the
small peninsula, was born John Davis, as we know him, or John Davys, as
he signed himself, who was probably a playmate, and certainly a
life-long friend, of these five.
Davis was an accomplished seaman, the best of the Elizabethan
navigators, and a man of accurate observation, always on the alert,
whose reputation does not rest only on the work he did in the northern
and other seas, for he was the author of _The Seaman's Secrets_, the
most popular practical navigation treatise of its time. Very early,
perhaps from the first, he was one of the moving spirits in this new
north-west enterprise, for on the 23rd of January, 1583, we find Dr.
Dee-who had helped to send Frobisher on his first voyage—making an entry
in his journal that Mr. Secretary Walsingham had come to his house,
where by good luck he found Mr. Adrian Gilbert, and so talk began on
"the north-west straits discovery"; and, next day, "I, Mr. Awdrian
Gilbert and John Davis, went by appointment to Mr. Beale, his howse,
where only we four were secret, and we made Mr. Secretary privie of the
N.W. Passage, and all charts and rutters were agreed upon in
generall"—"rutter" being the French "routier," originating in _Le
Routier de la Mer_, signifying a book of sea routes. Another important
friend of Davis was William Sanderson, the representative of the
merchants by whom the expenses of the voyage were borne, he being the
chief subscriber. One of the ships, the _Moonshine_, seems to have
belonged to him, and it was largely owing to his influence among the
shareholders that Davis was appointed captain and chief pilot of the
"exployt," in which he was to practically rediscover Greenland.
There were two vessels, the _Sunshine_ of London, fifty-nine tons, with
twenty-three persons on board, and the _Moonshine_ of Dartmouth,
thirty-five tons, with nineteen. They left Dartmouth on the 7th of June,
1585, but had to put in at Falmouth and then at the Scillies, where
Davis occupied the twelve days he spent there in surveying and charting
the islands. On the 20th of July they were sailing down the east coast
of Greenland, and were so little attracted by it that Davis called it
the Land of Desolation. Nine days afterwards he found a group of many
pleasant green islands bordering on the shore, while the mountains of
the mainland were still covered with snow, and here he landed on the
west coast at Gilbert Sound, as he named it, near where Godthaab now is,
and entered into communication with the natives.
[Illustration: A GREENLANDER IN HIS KAYAK]
For such occasions, apparently, he had among the _Sunshine_ people four
described as musicians, whom, on sighting the Eskimos, he sent for. As
soon as they arrived from the ship he ordered them to strike up a
dancing tune, and to their merry music Davis and his men began to caper
as if they were enjoying themselves immensely, while the lookers-on
gradually increased in number. "At length," he says, "one of them
poynting up to the sunne with his hande would presently strike his brest
so hard that we might hear the blowe. This he did many times, before he
would any way trust us. Then John Ellis the master of the _Mooneshine_,
was appointed to use his best policie to gaine their friendshippe: who
strooke his breast and poynted to the sunne after their order: which
when he had diverse times done, they began to trust him, and one of them
came on shoare, to whom we threwe our caps, stockings and gloves, and
such other things as then we had about us, playing with our musicke, and
making signes of joy, and dancing. So the night comming we bade them
farewell, and went aboord our barks."
The next morning, being the 30th of July, thirty-seven canoes came up to
the ships, their occupants calling to the English to come on shore. "Wee
not making any great haste unto them, one of them went up to the top of
the rocke, and lept and daunced as they had done the day before, shewing
us a seales skinne, and another thing made like a timbrel, which he did
beate upon with a sticke, making a noyse like a small drumme." Whereupon
Davis manned his boats and went to the waterside where they were in
their canoes, "and after we had sworne by the sunne after their fashion,
they did trust us. So I shooke hands with one of them, and hee kissed my
hand, and we were very familier with them. We bought five canoas of
them, we bought their clothes from their backs, which were all made of
seales skins and birdes skinnes: their buskins, their hose, their
gloves, all being commonly sewed and well dressed: so that we were fully
persuaded that they have divers artificers among them. Wee had a paire
of buskins of them full of fine wooll like bever. Their apparell for
heate, was made of bird skinnes with their feathers on them. We sawe
among them leather dressed like glovers leather, and thicke thongs like
white leather of a good length. Wee had of their darts and oares, and
found in them that they would by no meanes displease us, but would give
us whatsoever we asked of them and would be satisfied with whatsoever we
gave them. They took great care one of an other: for when we had bought
their boates, then two other woulde come and carie him away betweene
them that had soulde us his." He describes them as "a very tractable
people, voyde of craft or double dealing, and easie to be brought to
civiltie or good order," the men of good stature, unbearded, small-eyed,
"by whom, as signes would permit, we understood that towards the north
and west there was a great sea."
During his stay among these islands he found considerable quantities of
wood—fir, spruce, and juniper—which whether it came floating any great
distance or grew in some island near he did not discover; but he thought
it grew further inland because the people had so many darts and paddles
which they held of little value and gave away for insignificant trifles.
He also found "great abundance of seales" in shoals as if they were
small fish; but saw no fresh water, only snow water in large pools, and
he notes that the "cliffes were all of such oare as M. Frobisher brought
from Meta Incognita."
Leaving the sound on the 1st of August he crossed the strait now named
after him and reached land in 66° 40´. In water "altogether voyd from ye
pester of ice" he anchored, "in a very fair rode, under a very brave
mount, the cliffs whereof were as orient as gold." This mount he named
Mount Raleigh, the roadstead he called Totnes Rode, the sound round the
mount he named Exeter Sound, the foreland to the north he called Dyer's
Cape, the southern foreland being named Cape Walsingham—all of which
names remain. Here white bears were killed "of monstrous bignesse," a
raven was descried upon Mount Raleigh, withies were found growing low
like shrubs, and there were flowers like primroses, though there was no
grass.
For three days Davis went coasting downwards, and rounding the
southern point of the peninsula, which he named the Cape of God's
Mercy, he entered what he afterwards called Cumberland Strait, now
Cumberland Gulf, supposing it to be his way to the westward. It was
clear of ice; sixty leagues up islands were found, among which a stay
was made during five days of very foggy foul weather. On the 15th of
August "we heard dogs houle on the shoare, which we thought had bene
Wolves, and therefore we went on shoare to kil them; when we came on
lande, the dogs came presently to our boate very gently, yet we
thought they came to pray upon us, and therefore we shot at them and
killed two: and about the necke of one of them we found a letheren
coller, whereupon we thought them to be tame dogs. Then wee went
farther and founde two sleads made like ours in Englande. The one was
made of firre, spruse and oken boards, sawen like inch boards; the
other was made all of whale bone, and there hung on the toppes of the
sleds three heads of beasts, which they had killed. We saw here
larkes, ravens, and partriges"—probably rock ptarmigan.
Searching about, it was agreed that the place was all islands, with
sounds passing between them; that the water remained of the same colour
as the main ocean, whereas in every bay they had been into it became
blackish; that a shoal of whales they saw must have come from the west,
because to the eastward no whale had been seen; that "there came a
violent counter checke of a tide from the south-west against the flood
which we came with, not knowing from whence it was maintayned"; that the
further they ran westward the deeper was the water, "so that hard abord
the shoare among these yles we could not have ground in 330 fathoms";
and that, lastly, there was a tide range of six or seven fathoms, "the
flood comming from diverse parts, so as we could not perceive the chiefe
maintenance thereof." For which six reasons it was determined to
continue the voyage to the westward if the weather changed—which it did
to worse with the wind unfavourable, so that the ships had to run for
shelter and then sail for home, crossing the Atlantic from Greenland in
a fortnight. On arrival Davis reported to Walsingham that the North-West
Passage was a matter nothing doubtful, but at any time almost to be
passed, the sea navigable, void of ice, the air tolerable, and the
waters very deep; and a voyage for next year was decided on, for which
the merchants of Exeter, Totnes, London, Cullompton, Chard, and
Tiverton, and five private subscribers, "did adventure their money"—to
the amount of £1175—"with Mr. Adrian Gilbert and Mr. John Davis in a
voyage for the discovery of China, the seventh daie of April in the
xxviij yeare of the rayne of or. soverayne Ladie Elizabeth."
The fleet, consisting of the _Mermaid_ of one hundred and twenty tons,
the _Sunshine_ and _Moonshine_, and a ten-ton pinnace named the _North
Star_, left Dartmouth on the 7th of May, 1586. On reaching Greenland the
_Sunshine_ and _North Star_ were sent up the east coast of Greenland,
while the _Mermaid_ and _Moonshine_ made for Gilbert Sound.
Here the Eskimos received them cordially "after they had espied in the
boate, some of our companie that were the yeere before heere with us,
they presently rowed to the boate, and tooke holde on the oare, and hung
about the boate with such comfortable joy as woulde require a long
discourse to be uttered: they came with the boates to our shippes,
making signes that they knewe all those that the yere before had bene
with them. After I perceived their joy, and smal feare of us, my selfe
with the merchaunts, and others of the company went a shoare, bearing
with me twentie knives: I had no sooner landed, but they lept out of
their Canoas, and came running to mee and the rest, and imbraced us with
many signes of hartie welcome: at this present there were eighteene of
them, and to each of them I gave a knife: they offered skinnes to mee
for rewarde, but I made signes that it was not solde, but given them of
curtesie: and so dismissed them for that time, with signes that they
shoulde returne againe after certaine houres." But soon there were
passing troubles owing to iron having so great an attraction for them
that they could not resist stealing it. While amongst them, exploring
the country, Davis compiled the first Eskimo vocabulary known, a list of
some forty words written down phonetically, most of them remarkably good
approaches considering that both parties were ignorant of each other's
language, none of them, however, except that for "sea" being likely to
be of any use in putting him on the road to China.
On leaving Gilbert Sound, Davis when in latitude 63° 8´ "fel upon a most
mighty and strange quantity of ice, in one intyre masse, so bigge as
that we knew not the limits thereof, and being withall so very high, in
forme of a land, with bayes and capes, and like high cliffe land, as
that we supposed it to be land, and therefore sent our pinnesse off to
discover it: but at her returne we were certainely informed that it was
onely ice, which bred great admiration to us all, considering the huge
quantity thereof, incredible to be reported in truth as it was, and
therefore I omit to speake any further thereof. This onely, I thinke
that the like before was never seene, and in this place we had very
stickle and strong currants. We coasted this mighty masse of ice untill
the 30 of July, finding it a mighty bar to our purpose: the ayre in this
time was so contagious, and the sea so pestered with ice, as that all
hope was banished of proceeding: for the 24 of July all our shrowds,
ropes, and sailes were so frozen, and compassed with ice, onely by a
grosse fogge, as seemed to me more then strange, sith the last yeere I
found this sea free and navigable, without impediments."
Crossing the straits he repaired and revictualled the _Moonshine_ in an
excellent harbour among islands where they found it very hot and were
"very much troubled with a flie which is called Musketa, for they did
sting grievously." Forsaken by the _Mermaid_, he abandoned the search in
Cumberland Sound as he "found small hope to pass any farther that way,"
and worked south, it being too late to go northwards, crossing Frobisher
Bay, which he described as "another great inlet neere forty leagues
broad where the water entered with violent swiftnesse, this we also
thought might be a passage, for no doubt the north parts of America are
all islands." Off the coast of Labrador he found a vast shoal of
codfish, of which he caught over forty with a long spike nail made into
a hook. These he salted, and some of them, on his return, he gave, at
Walsingham's request, to Burghley, who, at an interview, encouraged him
to make a further attempt.
Next year he was off again, this time "to the Isles of the Molucca or
the coast of China." He seems to have been on board the _Ellen_, a small
craft of some twenty tons, his two other vessels being the _Sunshine_ as
before, and the _Elizabeth_. These he left to fish for cod in the
straits while he went northward from Gilbert Sound in his little
"clinker," which he had probably chosen as being handy for ice
navigation. Running along the land, to which he gave the name of London
Coast, he reached 72° 12´—the highest north up to then attained—where he
named the loftiest of the headlands Sanderson's Hope, whose lofty crest
piercing through the driving clouds near Upernivik has become perhaps
the best-known landmark in the northern seas. Here the wind suddenly
shifting to the northward made further progress impossible, and he had
to shape his course westerly, and then, owing to ice, which he in vain
endeavoured to get round to the north, he had to turn southwards. Amid
much fog, and with the ice always present, he came down the coast of
Baffin Land, giving a name here and there on the way, until on the 31st
of July he passed "a very great gulfe, the water whirling and roring, as
it were the meetings of tides," which was probably the entrance to
Hudson Strait. Next day he was off the Labrador coast and named Cape
Chidley after his friend who died in the Straits of Magellan, and on the
15th of August he laid his course for England.
[Illustration: BAFFIN BAY IN 1819]
Of this voyage Hakluyt prints the Traverse Book, one of the earliest
known. In it the full detail is given for every day, arranged in nine
columns, one each for the month, the day, the hour, the courses, the
leagues, the elevation of the pole in degrees and minutes, the wind, and
a remarks column headed "The Discourse"—for Davis was an exact and
systematic man remarkable for his latitudes never being wrong, though
like all those old navigators before the invention of the chronometer,
he was frequently out in his longitude. He was going off again bound for
the sea north of Sanderson's Hope, but the coming of the Armada and the
death of Walsingham caused the postponement of the project he did not
abandon, for it seems that the _Desire_, in which he discovered the
Falkland Islands at the other end of America, was to be his reward for
accompanying Cavendish round the world, and that in her he intended to
make his next Polar voyage.
The work he had set himself to do was done by William Baffin, who first
appears in the Arctic record as pilot of the _Patience_ in James Hall's
Greenland voyage in 1612, which ended in Hall being killed in revenge
for the kidnapping proceedings on the two previous voyages under the
Danish flag. Baffin then made two voyages, as we have seen, to
Spitsbergen in the service of the Muscovy Company, and, in that of the
Company for the Discovery of the North-West Passage, he made his fourth,
in 1615. In Hudson's old ship the _Discovery_, also her fourth trip to
the north, he passed up Hudson Strait to the end of Southampton Island,
where he abandoned the attempt to get through owing to ice and shallow
water, and returned after discovering the land that Parry named after
him.
In his fifth voyage, again in the _Discovery_, with Robert Bylot again
as master, he left Gravesend on the 16th of March, 1616, and reached
Sanderson's Hope on the 30th of May, discovering the great bay to the
north which bears his name. Passing the Women Islands and the Baffin
Islands off Cape Shackleton, he took the middle passage across Melville
Bay, coasting along by Cape York, by the cape named after one of his
directors, Sir Dudley Digges, and the sound named after another of his
directors, Sir John Wolstenholme; along Prudhoe Land, entering the North
Water of the whalers, reaching Cape Alexander in 77° 45´, his farthest
north; opening up and naming Smith Sound, after Sir Thomas Smith,
another of his directors, and Jones Sound, after Alderman Sir Francis
Jones, another of the board, and Lancaster Sound, after Sir James
Lancaster of the East India Company. Thus, coasting Ellesmere Land,
North Devon, Bylot Island, and Baffin Land, he continued his voyage from
the north on his way home. A good piece of work: the discoveries so many
and unexpected that people ceased to believe in them, geographers going
so far as to erase his bay from their maps until, two hundred years
afterwards, Ross and Parry sailed over the land of the unbelievers and
confirmed Baffin's work in every detail—and Ross, in his best
mountain-finding manner, reported no thoroughfare at Smith Sound.
[Illustration: DR. E. K. KANE]