away to their resting places farther north. During the whole winter, they saw only one of the natives, who visited them twice, and gave Hudson a deer-skin for a knife.

Towards the middle of July, the vessel was again got afloat; but in a few days they were beset by ice, and once more assailed by hunger. The long suppressed discontent of the crew now broke out into open mutiny, and Hudson and his son, with seven faithful seamen, were cast adrift in an open boat, and were never afterwards heard of. The mutineers freed the vessel from the ice, and steered to Cape Digges, where they encountered terrible weather, being beset by ice for a fortnight, and thrice driven upon rocks. During this time they were nearly starving, but when the weather improved, they found fish and game enough for their wants. They were attacked by the Esquimaux, however, and four of them slain; and then they sailed to the eastward, suffering terribly from hunger, and reduced to despair. Juet died on the voyage, and the survivors reached Ireland in a starving state, having devoured even their candles. Thence they were sent to England, where they told a tale which, without bringing upon them the punishment they deserved, caused the Muscovy Company to despatch a vessel, under the command of Thomas Button, to discover Hudson and his unfortunate companions, should they yet be living.

Bylot and another of the mutineers accompanied Button, who reached Hudson Bay without any mischance, and wintered there, but found no clue to the fate of the missing men. In the summer of 1613, he explored the shores of Southampton Island, and discovered the channel between its western side and the mainland of America, which, after an eminent director of the Muscovy Company, he named Sir Thomas Roe's Welcome.

VOYAGES OF JONAS POOLE IN THE TRACK OF HUDSON-ROBERT FOTHERBY'S VOYAGES TO SPITZBERGEN-EXPLORATIONS OF WILLIAM BAFFIN- DISCOVERY OF BAFFIN BAY, SMITH SOUND, AND LANCASTER SOUND.

BOUT six weeks before Hudson sailed on his last voyage, the Muscovy Company despatched Jonas Poole, in a small vessel, with instructions to follow that great explorer's track to Spitzbergen, and push thence as far northward as might be found practicable. Poole was stopped by ice in latitude 77° 25', on the west coast of Spitzbergen, and returned; but he renewed the attempt in the two following years, though without getting any farther.

In the spring of 1614, the Company sent Robert Fotherby in the same direction, with the famous William Baffin as pilot. They were off the headland named after the industrious cosmographer, Hakluyt, on the 3rd of June; but their progress was there stopped by a barrier of ice, and, after being delayed several days by bad weather, they stood out to sea, and got to the north of the headland, only to find the icy wall still obstructing them. They then steered to the westward, but, finding the ice trend to the south-west, returned to the coast after a run of twenty-eight leagues along the edge of the barrier. In the middle of July, they ascended a hill, whence they saw the ice shutting them in on every side, but discerned open water in the

Fotherby and Baffin.

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extreme distance. On the 9th of August, they saw two Dutch ships going south, having been stopped by the ice; but Fotherby and Baffin resolved to make another effort, and succeeded in pushing through the ice twenty-four leagues to the northward. Stopped again by the barrier of icebergs, they sailed along it for two days, and were then forced to return to their harbour by a northerly wind and a heavy fall of snow.

They succeeded in getting up Redcliffe Sound in a boat, into open water; but another snow-storm coming on, and the wind, which had shifted to the east, carrying the ice up the sound, they returned to the ship. Towards the end of August, a south-westerly breeze raised the temperature so much that the ice broke up, and they sailed to the north-west, nearly reaching the eightieth parallel. There they were again stopped by a barrier of ice, and, in attempting to penetrate it, got embayed among the bergs, and with difficulty extricated the ship from its perilous position. The wind then changed to the north, and they turned the vessel's head homeward, entering the Thames on the 4th of October, with all hands in good health.

In the following year two Arctic expeditions were undertaken, Fotherby taking the same course as before, in a pinnace of twenty tons only, and Bylot, who had been Hudson's mate, sailing to the north-west, with Baffin as pilot. The former, after encountering many impediments from thick fogs and floating ice, reached Hakluyt Headland, the north-west point of Spitzbergen, in the beginning of July; but his little vessel was forced on the ice in a gale, and received so much damage that he was obliged to return to harbour for repairs. He then steered to the westward, but encountered a barrier of icebergs, which forced him to run southward. Large flocks of birds

E

which were seen indicated the contiguity of land, which he supposed to be the east coast of Greenland; but the weather was so thick that he could see nothing, and he continued to run to the southward until, in latitude 71° 35', the weather having become clear, he saw a high snow-clad hill, which, on a nearer approach, was found to be a precipitous island, girt with black rocks and icebergs. This is supposed to have been the solitary island of Jan Mayen, whence he ran to Hakluyt Headland again, but there met such a strong gale from the north-east that he despaired of getting further north, and availed himself of that wind to make a quick run to England.

Bylot in the meantime had reached the south coast of Greenland, and sailed into Davis Strait, encountering many enormous icebergs, one of which was estimated to tower two hundred and forty feet above the sea. One day, while near the west coast of Greenland, they heard the barking of dogs ashore, and going to the beach in a boat, found five tents of seal-skins, and several sledges; but the owners of the tents were absent. The barking proceeded from between thirty and forty of the curly-coated bush-tailed dogs which the Esquimaux use to draw their sledges, for which duty they were harnessed. Twenty of the natives presently came ashore from their canoes, and, after some exchange of signs with them, the explorers returned to their ship.

Ice was now met with in such heavy masses that they would have been in great danger, “had not God, who is stronger than ice or stream," as the narrator of the voyage observes, delivered them. They then steered towards the south-west, sailed through Hudson Strait into the great bay named after that navigator, and coasted the eastern side of Southampton Island as far as Fox Channel. Then, with a broad opening to the north before them, though probably encumbered with ice,

they availed themselves of a westerly wind to run out into the Northern Ocean, and returned to England, making such an unfavourable report of the prospect of a north-west passage being discovered in that direction that no further exploration west of Hudson Bay was attempted for more than a century afterwards.

In 1616, Baffin sailed again, with instructions to push northward as far as the eightieth parallel, or farther if he found an open sea, and then to steer westerly, by which course it was hoped that he might "bear down upon Japan." Making first for Greenland, and sailing through Davis Strait, he reached, on the 30th of May, the farthest point attained by the navigator after whom the passage is named. Some islands were discovered, to which the name of Women Islands was given, because some tents on them were found to be inhabited only by women. Soon afterwards progress was stopped by ice, and the ship was anchored in a creek, to await its breaking up. The obstacle yielding to a southerly breeze, Baffin sailed northward again, tacking among the floating masses of ice, with the air always thick with snow, until the seventy-sixth parallel was reached. A cape and a sound were there named after Digges and Wolstenholme; and, after encountering a severe storm, Whale Sound was discovered, and, at the seventy-eighth parallel, a sound and an island, which were named after Sir Thomas Smith, first chairman of the East India Company, and the compiler of the old collection of voyages and travels which has been so useful to subsequent writers.

Baffin was now at the entrance of the channel which, at the present day, is regarded as the gateway of the yet undiscovered regions surrounding the North Pole; and, if he had sailed in, he might have anticipated the very latest discoveries in that direction. But, though he was ordered to run north to the