"The General, albeit, with the first, perchance, he found out the error, and that this was not the olde straights, yet he persuaded the Fleete alwayes that they were in their right course, and knowen straights. Howbeit, I suppose, he rather dissembled his course." "And as some of the companie reported, he has since confessed that if it had not beene for the charge and care he had of the fleete and freighted ships, he both would and could have gone through to the South Sea, called Mar del Sur, and dissolved the long doubt of the passage which we seeke to finde to the rich country of Cataya” (p. 80). Having taken in a vast quantity of ore the vessels returned, and it proving, on examination, utterly worthless, no further attempt was made by Frobisher. The preceding detail, while it has enabled us to draw some facts from the rare and curious volumes in which they have long slumbered, has effected incidentally, it is hoped, the purpose which connects them with these pages. It is evident, that nothing but Frobisher's departure from the plain Instructions laid down for his government, prevented his doing what was achieved by Cabot so long before, and by Hudson in the next century. But after his first blind experiment he was intent on another object. We find him actually driven into the true Strait and confessing that he saw his way quite clear. At this very moment he had in his Cabin the Instructions drawn up, at the instance of his patrons, by Willes, describing the Strait in a manner not to be misunderstood, and strengthening all the hopes suggested by his own observation. That paper, as actually printed in England the year before he sailed on the Third Expedition, urges to this day its testimony against him. The tract of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, procured in MS. for his use, and printed two years before, offered the same cheering confirmation. It is difficult to screen Frobisher altogether from reproach, for the discovery of the passage evidently continued a leading object with those who had set forth the Expedition. When, therefore, he voluntarily abandoned the route which he was convinced would conduct him through the Strait, we see that his own eager sympathies were with the more sordid objects of pursuit, and induced him to turn away from the peril, and the glory, of the onward course. What must be thought, under such circumstances, of a writer who refuses a place to the name of Cabot in a list of those who had engaged in the enterprise? "The reign of George III, will stand conspicuous and proudly pre-eminent in future history, for the spirit with which discoveries were prosecuted and the objects of science promoted; and a dawn of hope appears that ere its close the interesting problem of a North-West passage will be solved, and this great discovery, to which the Frobishers, the Hudsons, &c., so successfully opened the way, be accomplished. Little, if any thing, has been added to the discoveries of these extraordinary men, who, in the early periods of navigation, had every difficulty to struggle against," &c. (Quarterly Review, vol. xviii. p. 213.) CHAP. XIII. VOYAGE OF HUDSON. AFTER what has been said of the evidence that lay open as to the success of Cabot, the task may be a superfluous one of tracing a familiarity with it to each succeeding Navigator. Yet with regard to Hudson, his acquaintance is apparent even with the volumes which collect and arrange the knowledge on the subject existing at the time of that Expedition of 1610 which has given to his name so much celebrity. In the voyage made by him two years before, he is found conferring amongst other designations that of "Hakluyt's Headland" (Purchas, vol. iii. p. 464). It would be absurd, then, to suppose him ignorant of the Volumes, published in London eight years before, which constitute that writer's claim to the gratitude of Seamen; nor can we suppose that in undertaking a voyage in search of the North-West passage he would overlook the information which they supplied as to his predecessors in the enterprise. He would find at p. 16, of the third vol. the Treatise of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in which it is said, "Furthermore, Sebastian Caboto, by his personal experience and travel, hath set forth and described this passage in his charts, which are yet to be seen in the Queen's Majesty's Privy Gallery at Whitehall, who was sent to make the discovery by King Henry VII., and entered the same fret, affirming that he sailed very far westward with a quarter of the North on the North side of Terra de Labrador the 11th of June, until he came to the Septentrional latitude of 67° and-a-half." He would find at p. 26, of the same volume, the yet more pointed statement of Willes, that Cabot represented the strait through which he penetrated to commence at about a longitude equivalent to 60° west from Greenwich and between 61° and 64° of latitude, "continuing the same breadth about ten degrees West, where it openeth southerly more and more." It could hardly fail to arrest his attention at p. 80, that Frobisher, in his last voyage, being driven by stress of weather into the very Strait thus described, "confessed that if it had not been for the charge and care he had of the Fleet and fraughted Ships he both would and could have gone through to the South Sea." In the same volume, p. 9, is the passage from Gomara, which represents Cabot to have proceeded by the route of Iceland. At page 441 of the first volume occurs a special recommendation of "Ortelius' Book of Maps." It has already been stated that in this work the Bay is plainly exhibited, and that the author had Cabot's Map before him. When, therefore, it appears that Hudson, in 1610, touched at Iceland on his way out, and finally penetrated into the Bay by following the Instructions so distinctly laid down, we cannot but suppose him aware that he was merely attempting to retrace the course taken, a century before, by Sebastian Cabot. |