was off Barrow's River, which is in lat. 67° 18′ 45′′; and having visited the falls of that river, his narrative is thus continued :

"We found, on our return, that a fresh southerly breeze, which had been blowing for several hours, had driven the ice to some distance from the land; so that at four P. M., as soon as the flood tide had slackened, we cast off, and made all possible sail to the northward, steering for a headland, remarkable for having a patch of land towards the sea insular in sailing along shore. As we approached this headland, which I named after my friend Mr. Edward Leycester Penrhyn, the prospect became more and more enlivening; for the sea was found to be navigable in a degree very seldom experienced in these regions, and the land trending two or three points to the westward of north, gave us reason to hope, we should now be enabled to take a decided and final turn in that anxiously desired direction.'

Another remark is suggested by Captain Parry's Narrative. Every one who has had occasion to consider human testimony, or to task his own powers of recollection, must have observed how tenaciously circumstances remain which had affected the imagination, even after names and dates are entirely forgotten. The statement of Peter Martyr exhibits a trophy of this kind. He recalls what his friend Cabot had said of the influence of the sun on the shore along which he was toiling amidst mountains of ice; "vastas repererit glaciales moles pelago natantes et lucem fere perpetuam tellure tamen libera gelu liquefacto," (Decades iii. lib. 6,) a passage which Hakluyt, (vol. iii. p. 8,) borrowing Eden's version, renders," he found monstrous heaps of ice swimming on the sea, and in manner continual day-light; yet saw he the land in that tract free from ice, which had been molten by the heat of the sun." Where do we look for this almost continual day-light, and this opportunity of noticing the appearance of the land? In that very channel, we would say, leading North from Hudson's Bay, where Captain Parry, later in the summer, whilst between 67° and 68°, and threatened every moment with destruction, thus records his own impressions, (p. 261,) ❝ Very little snow was now lying upon the ground, and numerous streams of water rushing down the hills and sparkling in the beams of the

D

morning sun, relieved in some measure the melancholy stillness, which otherwise reigned on this desolate shore."

There has been held in reserve, the piece of evidence which goes most into detail.

In the third volume of Hakluyt, (p. 25,) is found a Tract, by Richard Willes, Gentleman, on the North-West passage. It was originally published in an edition, that Willes put forth in 1577, of Richard Eden's Decades, and forms part of an article therein, which Hakluyt has strangely mangled, addressed to Lady Warwick daughter of the Earl of Bedford. It was drawn up, as we shall have occasion to shew, for the use of Sir Martin Frobisher. In this tract Willes combats the various arguments urged at that time against the practicability of the enterprize; and his statement of one of the objections advanced furnishes an all important glimpse at the map of Cabot. In the following passage, (3 Hakluyt, p. 25,) the enemies of the enterprize are supposed to say :

Well, grant the West Indies not to continue continent unto the Pole. Grant there be a passage between these two lands; let the gulf lie nearer us than commonly in Cardes we find it, namely, between 61 and 64 degrees North, as Gemma Frisius, in his Maps and Globes, imagineth it, and so left by our countryman, Sebastian Cabot, in his Table, which the Earl of Bedford hath at Cheynies;* let the way be void of all difficulties yet, &c. &c.”

And, again, Willes, speaking in his own person, says, (3 Hakluyt, p. 26)—

"For that Caboto was not only a skilful seaman but a long traveller, and such a one as entered personally that straight, sent by King Henry VII. to make this aforesaid discovery as in his own Discourse of Navigation you may read in his Card, drawn with his own hand, that the mouth of the North Western Straight lieth near the 318 meridian, between 61 and 64 degrees in the elevation, continuing the same breadth about ten degrees West, where it openeth southerly more and more."

It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that, until a comparatively recent period, Longitude was measured, universally,

On application, in the proper quarter, it has been ascertained that this Document cannot, after diligent search, be found.

from Ferro, once supposed to be the most western part of the World; and that the computation of degrees from that point proceeded first over the old World and thus made its journey of 360 degrees. Adding together, then, the 42 degrees which complete the circuit, and the distance between Ferro and Greenwich, we have, within a few minutes, 60° West from Greenwich as the longitude named; and if we note, on a modern Map, where that degree of longitude crosses Labrador, it will be seen how little allowance is necessary for the "about 318," which Willes, somewhat vaguely, states as the commencement of the strait. He, probably, judged by the eye of that fact, and of the distance at which the strait began to " open southerly."

A pause was, designedly, made in the midst of Willes's statement in order to separate what refers to Cabot's Map from his own speculations. The paragraph quoted, concludes thus:

"Where it openeth southerly more and more until it come under the tropic of Cancer, and so runneth into Mar del Sur, at the least 18 degrees more in breadth there, than it was where it first began; otherwise, I could as well imagine this passage to be more unlikely than the voyage to Moscovia, and more impossible than it, for the far situation, and continuance thereof in the frosty clime."

That Cabot represented the strait as continuing in the degree mentioned, or as presenting a southern route, is incredible, because we know that he was finally arrested at 67° and-a-half whilst struggling onward. But the object of Willes was, to meet the objection of those who contended that even supposing a passage could be found so far to the North yet the perils of the navigation must render it useless for the purposes of commerce. He represents them as saying, (Hakluyt, vol. iii. p. 25)—

"If any such passage be, it lieth subject unto ice and snow for the most part of the year. Before the sun hath warmed the air and dissolved the ice each one well knoweth that there can be no sailing. The ice once broken through, the continual abode the sun maketh a certain season in those parts how shall it be possible for so weak a vessel, as a ship is, to hold out amid

whole islands, as it were, of ice continually beating on each side, and at the mouth of that gulf issuing down furiously from the North, &c."

Willes, therefore, artfully concedes, as has been seen, the force of the objection, but attempts to elude it by adverting to the form of the Bay, and arguing that the break to the South held out the prospect of a safer route. In this effort he derived important assistance from the maps of Gemma Frisius and Tramezine, both of which are yet extant, and really do make the strait expand to the South, and fall into the Pacific precisely in the manner he describes. He, therefore, couples the delineation of Cabot, from actual observation, with the conjectures of the others, and draws certain inferences, "if the Cardes of Cabota and Gemma Frisius, and that which Tramezine imprinted be true," (3 Hakluyt, p. 28.) There is no difficulty, as has been said, in making the separation, when we advert to the fact that Cabot was actually at 67° and-a-half, when the alarm of his associates compelled him to turn back.

The representation of Cabot may, in point of accuracy, be advantageously contrasted with that of more recent maps. Thus, on the one found in Purchas, (vol. iii. p. 852,) the 318th degree of longitude passes through nearly the middle of the "Fretum Hudson." In the "Voyages from Asia to America, for completing the discoveries of the North-West Coast of America," published at London, in 1764, with a translation of S. Muller's Tract, as to the Russian discoveries, there is a map by "Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to his Majesty," taken from that published by the Royal Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburgh. The old mode of computation is observed, and the 318th degree of longitude does not touch Labrador, but passes to the eastward of it.

Such is the evidence which exists, to establish the fact assumed as the title of this chapter. There remains one obvious and striking consideration. Had Cabot been disposed to fabricate a tale to excite the wonder of his contemporaries, not only were the means of detection abundant, but he, assuredly, would not have

limited himself to 67° and-a-half. To a people familiar with the navigation to Iceland, Norway, &c., there was nothing marvellous in his representation; nay, Zeigler, as we have seen, will not believe that great mountains of ice could have been encountered in that latitude. It is only by knowing the navigation of the Strait, and Bay, and northern channel, that we can appreciate the difficulties he had to overcome, and the dauntless intrepidity that found a new impulse in perils before which his terrified companions gave way.