as appears from the charts of Hortelius and Mercator, published in 1570.' These charts might mislead the writer of a voyage made by the fireside, but it required not a skilful' navigator to detect their errors on the spot.

But the thirty-third paragraph, which exceeds in absurdity all the rest, establishes in the mind of Amoretti the authenticity of the Relation,' and places its veracity beyond all doubt. It states that being about to leave the harbour towards the middle of June, a large vessel of 800 tons burden was observed to approach from the South Sea, steering directly for the Strait. Finding the strangers to be pacifically inclined, mutual civilities were exchanged, and Maldonado received from them some presents of silks, porcelaine, &c. such as are brought from China. The people appeared to be Muscovites, or Hanseatics, from the bay of St. Nicholas or St. Michael to understand each other they were under the necessity of conversing in Latin; the strangers seemed to be Christians, and if not Catholics, were at least Lutherans. They said they came from a great city more than 100 leagues off, which Maldonado thinks (but he is not sure) they called Robr, or something like it, which they told him had a very extensive harbour, upon a navigable river, and belonged to the King of Tartary: they added, that they had left there another ship belonging to their countrymen. As they treated our discoverer with very little confidence, this was all that could be got out of them: they sailed together, it would seem, through the Strait, when coming into the North Sea, the stranger bore away to the westward, and Maldonado pursued his route for Spain the same way he had come.

Our English sailors would most certainly have at once set down this mysterious vessel for the Flying Dutchman,' so frequently seen off the Cape of Good Hope, but luckily for Maldonado his more enlightened crew were addicted to no such idle superstitions. It would seem,' says Amoretti, with great naïveté, that this vessel, turning to the left after passing the Strait, coasted Siberia, and consequently that Deschnew was not the first who made this voyage.' After all that Cook and King have discovered and published; after all the fruitless attempts of the Russians to circumnavigate the northern coast of Siberia, one can scarcely imagine that any man of common understanding, much less of some research, which M. Amoretti certainly is, could for a moment lend himself to such an idle tale, which, as the editor of the Voyage of Sutil and Mexicana observes, is full of false calculations, of incredible circumstances, and gross fictions of every kind.' But he who can really believe that the north-west passage has actually been made by several navigators; that some straits have been shut up, others opened, and that islands have disappeared by

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'convulsions of nature' within the last two centuries, is capable of believing any thing, however absurd. We can safely assure M. Amoretti that the account of one Cluny' having made this passage in 1745; of his having solicited the reward offered by our government, without obtaining it; of the Hudson's Bay Company finding means to prevent his journal being published, is destitute of all foundation. The compiler of the Histoire Générale des Voyages' is not the only Frenchman in whose hands an English work is not safe from misrepresentation or misapprehension. Cluny wrote a book called the American Traveller,' in which he reprobates in strong language the conduct of the Hudson's Bay Company, and lays down a variety of plans and projects for the improvement of the American colonies; but he is so far from pretending to have made the north-west passage, that he even doubts its existence; but in his chart prefixed, there are two parallel dotted lines from Repulse Bay to the Icy Sea, over which is written- Here is supposed to be the North-west Passage; which Vaugondy, the king's geographer, in a chart approved by the Académie Royale des Sciences,' has thus translated Côte parcourue par le Capitaine Cluny, auteur de l'American Traveller.

We suspect this pretended voyage of Maldonado to be the clumsy and audacious forgery of some ignorant German, from the circumstance of 15 leagues to the degree being used in some of the computations. It is, indeed, a fit companion for Damberger's Travels; and we cannot but regret that Amoretti should have thought he was fulfilling the intention of the pious founder of the Ambrosian library in selecting so palpable a fiction for publication, and still more that he should have undertaken to defend it. We do not, however, hesitate to express our firm belief that Maldonado did perform a voyage; and that Nicolao Antonio did see the journal of that voyage in the hands of the Bishop of Segovia: it was not, however, a voyage for the discovery of the north-west passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific,' (no such discovery being once mentioned by the Spanish bibliographer,) but simply for the discovery of the Strait of Anian.' That Spain should be extremely anxious for the security of her possessions in the Pacific and Indian oceans, when she saw the English with extraordinary perseverance sending out expeditions year after year, for the avowed purpose of discovering a nearer route to those seas; and when their armed cruizers, unauthorized it is true, but countenanced by the government, were destroying the Spanish commerce on the western coasts of America, was exceedingly natural. She must have seen these bold undertakings with alarm, and that would dictate to her the policy of ascertaining whether any and what kind of an outlet into the Pacific was likely to favour the enterprize of so active an enemy, and what

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the

the means were to secure from surprize her valuable posses sions, extending from Peru to the Philippine islands:-in short, to ascertain the existence and the nature of this Strait of Anian as marked in all the early charts, and now become an object of the first importance. For such a purpose Maldonado was a proper person to be employed; and that he was so employed, but proceeded round Cape Horn, we have very little doubt. No Spaniard, that we know of, ever entered, or attempted to enter, Hudson's Bay in search of the N. W. passage, except Estovan Gomez in 1525; but of this Steven Gomez,' says Purchas, little is left us but a jest.' He reached only the coast of Newfoundland in the -50th parallel of latitude, and carried off some of the natives. Being asked, on his return, what he had brought home, he answered Esclavos, which the inquirer mistaking for clavos, or cloves, concluded that Gomez had discovered the north-west passage to the Moluccas; and so posted to the Court,' says Purchas, to carry the first news of this spicy discovery.'

The object of Maldonado's voyage being that of reconnoitring rather than of making discoveries, it could not be expected that the Spaniards would publish it; they had, indeed, at that time, matters of far greater importance to attend to the arms of England had just destroyed what the elements had spared of their invincible Armada.'-Under these circumstances the precautionary voyage of Maldonado was likely to remain among those unpublished manuscripts which the Duc d'Almadover supposes to have been buried in the dust of the archives of Madrid,' and which Delisle says, 'have been so carefully concealed, that at this day the Spaniards themselves know nothing about them.' If by any means the spurious production in question was foisted into the records of the Council for the Indies,' its members, by withholding it from publication, have given a further proof of that sound discretion which induced them to bury in the dust of their archives' forty-nine of the fifty memorials which Capitan Pedro Fernandez de Quiros presented to the king, eight of which, by his own statement, related to a settlement which it behoved his majesty to make on a land then undiscovered (Australia incognita), and since. known to have no existence.

But Maldonado probably discovered the strait he was sent in search of, and there are grounds for concluding that he describes it to lie about the 59th or 60th parallel of latitude, because the instructions of Malaspina directed him to look for it as far as 60° north. Now Maldonado, in coasting America from the southward, could not have reached that latitude before he fell in with Cook's Inlet, which extends from about 58° to 6130, and is a strait of considerable magnitude,the width between Cape Donglas and Cape Elizabeth being about

18 or 20 leagues: and as the Strait of Anian was laid down in the 60° of latitude in all the charts at the time of Maldonado, and as he found the land stretching on the one side to the south-east, and on the other to the south-west, it was most natural that this navigator should conclude that Cook's Inlet was the identical strait which he was sent to discover; and that it separated the two great continents of Asia and America. We must not forget that Cook, who, with all the advantage of Behring's discoveries and chart, was employed twelve days in ascertaining that it was not a strait, observes, that if he had not examined this very considerable inlet, it would have been assumed, by speculative fabricators of geography, as a fact, that it communicated with the sea to the north, or with Baffin's or Hudson's Bay to the east.'

Destitute as we consider the Relation' of Maldonado to be both of' veracity and authenticity,' we are by no means inclined to suppose that such a voyage as it describes is impracticable. We firmly believe, on the contrary, that a navigable passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific round the northern coast of America does exist, and may be of no difficult execution. Why, then, it may be asked, have all the attempts made at different times, from both sides the continent of America, failed? Because not one of them was ever made near that part of the coast of America, round which it is most likely the passage would lead into the Frozen or Northern ocean. To prove this we must take a glance at what has been done; and if our readers should feel that pride and pleasure, which we do, in reviewing the daring enterprizes and the perilous and persevering efforts of our early navigators in the frozen regions of the North, they will not deem a brief survey of them tedious or misplaced* Resolute, gallant, glorious attempts! exclaims that quaint but delightful old writer of the Pilgrimage,'

'How,' continues he, shall I admire your heroicke courage, ye marine worthies, beyond all names of worthiness! that neyther dread so long eyther

* We owe much of the rapid growth of our infant navy to those voyages; and we may here take occasion to observe, that the honourable appellation of Father of the British Navy has not been justly conferred on Henry VIII. The real founder of a permanent navy, distinct from the Cinque-port Marine, was the Conqueror of Agincourt. Among the many curious documents brought to light by the present able and industrious keeper of the records in the Tower, is a letter of Henry V. dated 12th August, 1417, directing the Lord Chancellor to issue letters-patent under the great seal, granting a sort of half-pay or annuity to certaine maistres for owr owne grete shippes, carrackes, barges and balyugers.' That this monarch had regular King's ships, distinct from the mercantile marine, is further corroborated by that curious poem in Hackluit's collection, called the English Policie, &c.' which complains of the neglect of the navy by Henry VI. and extols the policie of keeping the see in the time of the marvellous werriour and victorious prince, King Henrie the fift and of his grete shippes.'-We like the policie' better than the poetry.

And if I should conclude all by the King
Henrie the Fift, what was his purposing

When

eyther presence or absence of the sunne; nor those foggy mysts, tempestuous winds, cold blasts, snowes and hayle in the ayre: nor the unequall seas, which might amaze the hearer, and amate the beholder, where the Tritons and Neptune's selfe would quake with chilling feare, to behold such monstrous icie ilands, renting themselves with terrour of their own owne massines, and disdaying otherwise both the seas sovereigntie, and the sunne's hottest violence, mustering themselves in those watery plaines where they hold a continual civil warre, and rushing one upon another, make windes and waves give backe; seeming to rent the eares of others, while they rent themselves with crashing and splitting their congealed armours.'

The flourishing commerce of the Portugueze and Spaniards in the Indian seas stimulated the merchants of England to a participation in that great source of wealth, by the discovery of a passage that would shorten the voyage to India and China to less than half the distance of that round the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. Such a passage was, in fact, supposed to have been made by Caspar de Cortereal, a Portugueze of some rank, in the year 1500. He touched at Newfoundland, passed over to Terra Verde, afterwards called Terra de Cortereal, and gave to the southern part of it, which was fit for cultivation, the name of Terra de Labrador. Then coasting to the northward and opening out a wide passage (now called Hudson's Strait) he concluded he had discovered the so much desired passage round America, which he is said to have named the Strait of Anian; not however, as we conceive, 'in honour of two brothers who accompanied him,' but because he deemed it to be the eastern extremity of a strait, whose western end opening into the Pacific, had already received that name. He hastened back to Portugal to communicate the agreeable intelligence, and was sent the following year to complete the discovery, but was never heard of more; and his brother Michael de Cortereal, who afterwards went in search of him, shared the same fate.

The first Englishman who undertook the discovery of a North

When at Hampton, he made the Great Dromons
Which passed other grete shippes of the Commons;
The Trinitie, the Grace de Dieu, the Holy Ghost
And other moe, which as now be lost,

What hope ye was the King's grete intent

Of thou shippes, and what in mind he meant ;
It was not ellis, but that he cast to bee

Lord round-about environ of the See.

Better indeed is Henry VII. entitled to be called the friend and founder of the avy than his successor. It was he who caused the Great Harry to be built at the expense of 15,000l. an enormous sum in those days. It was he too who engaged the Cabots of Venice in the discovery of Newfoundland; and it was accident only that prevented him from employing Columbus. But the spirit of discovery and foreign enterprize died away and revived only in full vigour after receiving the fostering hand of Elizabeth, whose long and flourishing protection of it has been exceeded only by that of George III.

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