CHAPTER III.
EXPLORATIONS TO THE NORTH-WEST.
BY CHARLES C. SMITH,
Treasurer of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
THE fresh spirit of maritime adventure which marked the last decade of the fifteenth century and the first quarter of the sixteenth century, owed its origin to mistaken theories as to the distance between the west of Europe and the east of Asia. Columbus believed that the land which he first discovered was an island on the coast of Japan; and he seems never to have relinquished this idea. The contemporary geographers all cherished the same mistake; and the early maps give a much better representation of the coast-line of Asia than they do of the shores of North America.[185] It is a curious fact that the true position and form of South America were familiar to cartographers long before there was any exact knowledge of the northern half of the continent. North America was regarded as an island or a collection of islands, through which it would not be difficult to find a short passage to Zipangu and Cathay,—the modern Japan and China.[186] Gradually these mistakes yielded to more correct views; but it was still believed that a feasible passage existed around the northern shore of the new continent. This belief was the inspiring motive of all the early northwestern explorations, and it lingered almost to our own time, long after every one knew that such a passage would be of no practical use. At length the problem has been solved; but the introduction of new methods of ocean and land trade and travel has deprived it of all but a purely scientific and geographical interest. Meanwhile the search for a northwest passage has developed an heroic endurance and a perseverance in surmounting obstacles scarcely paralleled anywhere else, and has added largely to the stores of human knowledge.
At the head of the long list of explorers for a northwest passage stand the names of the Cabots; but the intricate questions as to the measure of just fame to be assigned to father and son have been fully treated in another chapter of this work,[187] and neither John nor Sebastian penetrated the more northern waters with which our inquiry is mainly concerned. It is enough now to recall their names as the leaders in an enterprise in which for nearly three centuries England took a foremost part, and that so early as 1497 John Cabot set sail in the hope of this great discovery. Within the next half century he was followed by his son Sebastian, the Cortereals, Cartier, and Hore, not one of whom sought to reach a high northern latitude. It was not until Frobisher sailed on his first voyage that the real northwest explorations can be said fairly to have begun. Since that time more than one hundred voyages and land journeys have been undertaken in this vain quest.
In two of the northwestern voyages of Martin Frobisher the discovery of a short way to the South Sea was only a secondary object. The adventurers at whose cost they were undertaken looked mainly to the profit from a successful search for gold, though they were not unmindful of the advantages to be gained by shortening the distance to the Spice Islands of the East. In the bitter quarrel between Frobisher and Michael Lok, after the third voyage, it was charged that Frobisher had neglected this part of the undertaking. But it was natural that Lok, who had no doubt lost heavily by the voyages, should be angry with Frobisher, and endeavor to make the most of any failure on his part to carry out the whole plan; and there is no reason to believe that Frobisher wilfully neglected the interests or the wishes of his employers, however much they may have been disappointed. The whole amount subscribed for the three voyages was upward of twenty thousand pounds, and of this sum Lok subscribed, for himself and his children, nearly one fourth. Among the subscribers were Queen Elizabeth, who invested four thousand pounds, Lord Burleigh, the Earl and Countess of Warwick, the Earl of Leicester, the Earl and Countess of Pembroke, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Thomas Gresham, Sir Francis Walsingham, and others scarcely less conspicuous in that generation.
Frobisher’s first expedition consisted of two small vessels, the “Gabriel” and the “Michael,” one of twenty-five tons and the other of twenty tons, and a pinnace of ten tons. They set sail from Blackwall on the 15th of June, 1576, but it was not until the 1st of July that they were clear of the coast of England. Not long after coming in sight of Friesland, Frobisher parted company with the pinnace, in which were four men, who were never seen again; and about the same time the “Michael” slipped away without any warning, and returned to England. Nevertheless, Frobisher pressed on, and on the 21st he entered the opening now known as Frobisher’s Strait or Bay, “having upon eyther hande a great mayne or continent; and that land uppon hys right hande as hee sayled westward, he judged to be the continente of Asia, and there to bee devided from the firme of America, which lyeth uppon the lefte hande over against the same.”[188] Into this bay, as it is now known to be, he sailed about sixty leagues, capturing one of the natives, whom he carried to England. The land, Meta Incognita, he took possession of in the name of the Queen of England, commanding his company, “if by anye possible meanes they could get ashore, to bring him whatsoever thing they could first find, whether it were living or dead, stocke or stone, in token of Christian possession.”[189] Some of the men returned to him with flowers, some with green grass, “and one brought a peece of black stone, much lyke to a seacole in coloure, which by the waight seemed to be some kinde of mettall or mynerall.” Frobisher reached England on his return in the following October, and on his arrival presented the stone to one of his friends, an adventurer in the voyage. The wife of this gentleman accidentally threw it into the fire, where it remained for some time, when it was taken out and quenched in vinegar. It then appeared of a bright gold color, and on being submitted to a goldfinder in London, was said to be rich in gold; and large profits were promised if the ore was sufficiently abundant.
This cut follows the engraving in the Hakluyt Society’s edition of Frobisher’s Voyages.
With this report, there was little difficulty in providing means for a second voyage. The new expedition consisted of a “tall ship of her Majesty’s,” named the “Ayde,” of two hundred tons, and of two smaller vessels, with the same names as those in the former voyage, but now said to be of thirty tons each. They were manned in all by one hundred and twenty men, to which number Frobisher was limited by his orders. After some delay, he sailed from Harwich on the 31st of May, 1577. By his orders he was directed to proceed at once to the place where the mineral was found, and set the miners at work. There he was to leave the “Ayde,” and then to sail to another place visited on his first voyage, where a further attempt at mining was to be made, and where one of the small barks was to be left. With the remaining bark he was to sail fifty or a hundred leagues farther west, to make “certayne that you are entred into the South Sea; and in yor passage to learne all that you can, and not to tarye so longe from the ‘Ayde’ and worckmen but that you bee able to retorne homewards wth the shippes in due tyme.” If the mines should prove less productive than it was hoped they would be, he was to “proceade towards the discovering of Cathaya wth the two barcks, and returne the ‘Ayde’ for England agayne.”[190] Frobisher had his first sight of Friesland on the 4th of July; and he reached Milford Haven, in Wales, on his return voyage, about the 23d of September. During this period of a little more than two months, his energies were mainly devoted to procuring ore, of which, in twenty days, he obtained nearly two hundred tons; but he also made as careful an examination as was practicable of the region previously visited by him, and added something to the stock of geographical knowledge. Two of the natives were captured, and were carried to England to be educated as interpreters.
Frobisher’s third voyage was planned on a much larger scale than any other which hitherto had been sent to the Arctic regions, and he was placed in command of fifteen vessels. They were all collected at Harwich by the 27th of May, 1578; and after receiving their instructions from Frobisher, they sailed together on the 31st. On the 2d of July they reached the mouth of Frobisher’s Bay; but after entering it a short distance, they found it so choked with ice that it was impossible to proceed. One of the vessels was soon sunk by the ice, and all suffered more or less. After beating about for several days, they entered a strait, supposed at first to lead to their desired goal, but which was, in fact, what is now known as Hudson’s Strait, the entrance to the great bay which bears his name, “havyng alwayes a fayre continente uppon their starreboorde syde, and a continuance still of an open sea before them.” According to Best, one of the captains, and an historian of the expedition, Frobisher was probably one of the first to discover the mistake, though he persuaded his followers that they were in the right course and the known straits. “Howbeit,” he adds, “I suppose he rather dissembled his opinion therein than otherwyse, meaning by that policie (being hymself ledde with an honorable desire of further discoverie) to enduce ye fleete to follow him, to see a further proofe of that place. And, as some of the company reported, he hath since confessed, that, if it had not bin for the charge and care he had of ye fleete and fraughted shippes, he both would and could have gone through to the South Sea, called Mare del Sur, and dissolved the long doubt of the passage which we seeke to find to the rich countrey of Cataya.”[191] Toward the latter part of July it was determined not to proceed any farther, and after many difficulties and dangers they returned to Meta Incognita. It had been their intention to erect a house here, and to leave a considerable party to spend the winter. But after a full consideration it was decided that this plan was impracticable, and it was relinquished. A house of lime and stone was, however, built on the Countess of Warwick’s Island, in which numerous articles were deposited. On the last day of August the fleet, having completed their loading with more than thirteen hundred tons of ore, sailed for England, where they arrived at various times about the 1st of October, and with the loss of not more than forty men in all. The ore proved to be of very little value, and the adventurers lost a large part of what they had subscribed.[192]
Of the voyages of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who is often included among the northwest explorers, little need be said here; for though he wrote an elaborate Discourse of a Discovery for a new Passage to Cataia, to stimulate the search for a northwest passage, the voyage in which he lost his life was not extended beyond the coasts of Newfoundland.[193]
FROM MOLINEAUX GLOBE, 1592.
[This globe is now in the Middle Temple. (See Editorial Note E, at the end of Dr. De Costa’s chapter.) This is thought to have been made, in part at least, from Davis’s charts, which are now lost. Kohl’s Catalogue of Maps in Hakluyt, p. 23. The sketch is to be interpreted thus:—
1. Grocland.
2. Hope Sanderson.
3. London cost.
4. Marchant Yle.
5. Davies island.
6. Challer’s Cape.
7. Gilbert’s Sound.
8. Easter Point.
9. Regin. Eli. forland.
10. Fretum Davis.
11. Mare Conglelatum.
12. C. Bedford.
13. Sandrson’s tour.
14. Mont Ralegh.
15. E. Cumberland isles.
16. E. Warwicke’s forland.
17. L. Lumley’s inlet.
18. A furious overfall.
19. Terre de Labrador.
20. Dorgeo.
21. I. de Arel.(?)
—Ed.]
Next in importance to the three voyages of Frobisher are the three voyages of Captain John Davis, who has been immortalized by the magnificent strait which bears his name, and which was discovered on his first voyage. On this voyage he sailed from Dartmouth on the 7th of June, 1585, with two vessels,—the “Sunshine,” of fifty tons, manned by twenty-three persons, and the “Moonshine,” of thirty-five tons, with seventeen men. But it was not until three weeks later that he was able to take his final departure from the Scilly Islands; and he arrived at Dartmouth, on his return, on the 30th of September. In this brief period he made some important discoveries, and sailed as far north as 66° 66′, and westward farther than any one had yet penetrated, “finding no hindrance.” He naturally concluded that he had already discovered the desired passage, and that it was only necessary to press forward in order to insure entire success. But he was compelled by stress of weather to put back, and he reached England shortly afterward. On his second voyage his little fleet was increased by the addition of the “Mermaid,” of one hundred tons, and the “North Star,” a pinnace of ten tons. He sailed from Dartmouth on the 7th of May, 1586, and for a time everything promised well; but at the end of July the crew of his largest vessel became discontented, and returned with her to England. Meanwhile, the “Sunshine” and the pinnace had been sent to make discoveries to the eastward of Greenland. But, in nowise disheartened by these circumstances, Davis determined to prosecute his enterprise in the “Moonshine.” He reached, however, not quite so far north as in his previous voyage, and apparently about as far west, and arrived home early in October,—“not having done so much as he did in his first voyage,” is the judgment of one of his successors in Arctic navigation.[194]
On his third voyage he sailed from Dartmouth, on the 19th of May, 1587, with three vessels,—the “Elizabeth,” the “Sunshine,” and a smaller vessel, the “Helen,”—and arrived at the same port, on his return, on the 15th of September. His course was in the track which he had previously followed; but he added little to the knowledge he had already gained, and having been inadequately provided for a long voyage, was obliged to sail for home when he thought “the passage is most probable, the execution easie.”[195]
FROM MOLINEAUX’S MAP, 1600.
[It is claimed that Davis, who was in England, June, 1600, to February, 1601, probably furnished the plot, and there is manifest an endeavor in it to reconcile the old Zeno map. Davis’s discoveries are correctly placed, but Frobisher’s are on the wrong side of the Straits. It needs the following key:—
1. A furious overfall.
2. Warwick’s forelande.
3. E. Cumberland Inlet.
4. Estotiland.
5. M. Rawghley.
6. Saunderson’s towe.
7. C. Bedford.
8. Fretum Davis.
9. Desolation.
10. Warwick’s Forlande (repeated).
11. Meta incognita.
12. Mr. Forbusher’s straights.
13. Reg. E. Foreland.
14. Freyland.
15. Gronlande.
See Editorial Note F, at the end of Dr. De Costa’s chapter.—Ed.]
It is a matter for surprise, in view of the sanguine expectations of Davis, that an interval of nearly fifteen years elapsed between his return from his third voyage and the sailing of the next expedition. This was sent out at the cost of the East India Company, and consisted of two small vessels,—the “Discovery,” under the command of Captain George Waymouth, and the “Godspeed,” under John Drew. Waymouth sailed from the Thames on the 2d of May, 1602, under a contract which provided that he should sail directly toward the coast of Greenland and the sea described as Fretum Davis, and that thence he should proceed by those seas, “or as he shall find the passadge best to lye towards the parts or kingdom of Cataya or China, or the backe side of America, wthout geveng ouer the proceedinge on his course soe longe as he shall finde those seas or any ṗte thereof navigable, and any possibilitie to make way or passadge through them.”[196] In spite of these specific directions, the voyage was not productive of any important results, though it is probable that he sighted land to the north of Hudson’s Strait; and Luke Fox appears to have been right when he says that Waymouth “neither discovered nor named any thing more than Davis, nor had any sight of Groenland, nor was so farre north; nor can I conceive he hath added anything more to this designe. Yet these two, Davis and he, did (I conceive), light Hudson into his straights.”[197] Waymouth himself ascribed his failure to a mutiny which occurred in the latter part of July, and which compelled him to return to Dartmouth, where he arrived on the 5th of August. An inquiry into the causes of the failure was begun shortly afterward, but no evidence has been found to show how it terminated.
Three voyages were undertaken not long afterward by the Danes, in which James Hall was the chief pilot; and one by the English, under the command of John Knight, in a pinnace of forty tons, sent out by the East India and Muscovy companies. But each of these voyages had for its chief object the discovery of gold and silver mines, and though they all seem to have followed in the track of Frobisher, they added little or nothing to the knowledge of Arctic geography, and contributed nothing toward the solution of the problem of a northwest passage. The first of these expeditions, in which both Hall and Knight were employed, consisted of two small ships and a pinnace, and sailed from Copenhagen on the 2d of May, 1605. After coasting along the western shore of Davis Strait as far north as 69°, the ships reached Elsinore on their return early in August. The next year a fleet of four ships and a pinnace was sent out, with Hall as pilot-major. They sailed from Elsinore on the 29th of May, but were prevented by the ice and stormy weather from reaching as far north as before, and after much delay they returned to Copenhagen on the 4th of October. In 1607 Hall accompanied a third expedition, consisting of two vessels, which was equally unproductive of results. When they had reached no farther than Cape Farewell, on the southern coast of Greenland, they were compelled to return, from causes which are variously stated, but which were probably complicated by a mutinous spirit in the crew.
In the same year with Hall’s second voyage, Knight sailed from Gravesend, on the 18th of April. Two months afterward he made land on the coast of Labrador; and the captain and five men went on shore to find a convenient place for repairing their vessel. Leaving two men with their boat, the captain and three men went to the highest part of the island. They did not return that day, and on the following day the state of the ice was such that it was impossible to reach them, and they were never heard from afterward. The pinnace then went to Newfoundland to repair; and after encountering many perils, reached Dartmouth on the 24th of December. Hall made a fourth voyage, in 1612, in two small vessels fitted out by some merchant-adventurers in London. In this voyage he was mortally wounded in an encounter with the Esquimaux on the coast of Labrador. His death destroyed all hope of a successful prosecution of the enterprise, and shortly afterward the vessels returned to England.
Henry Hudson had already acquired a considerable reputation as a bold and skilful navigator, and had made three noteworthy voyages of discovery when he embarked on his voyage for northwest exploration. On the 17th of April, 1610, he sailed from Gravesend in the “Discovery,” a vessel of only fifty-five tons, provisioned for six months; and on the 9th of June he arrived off Frobisher’s Strait. He then sailed southwesterly, and entering the strait which bears his name, passed through its entire length, naming numerous islands and headlands, and finally, on the 3d of August, saw before him the open waters of Hudson’s Bay. Three months were spent in examining its shores, and on the 10th of November his vessel was frozen in. She was not released until the 18th of June in the following year, and six days afterward a mutiny occurred. Hudson and his son, with six of the crew who were either sick or unfit for work, were forced into a shallop, where they were voluntarily joined by the carpenter; and then the frail boat was cut loose, and the mutineers set sail for home, leaving their late master and his companions to the mercy of the waves or death by starvation. They were never seen or heard of again; but after encountering great perils and privations, the mutineers finally made land in Galway Bay, on the coast of Ireland. Hudson’s own account of the voyage terminates with his entrance into the bay discovered by him. For the later explorations and for the tragic end of the great navigator’s brilliant career, we are forced to trust to the narrative of one of his men, Abacuk Pricket. If we may believe the story told by him, he had no part in the mutiny; but no one can read his narrative without sharing the suspicion of Fox: “Well, Pricket, I am in great doubt of thy fidelity to Master Hudson.”[198]
Two years after Hudson sailed on his last voyage, a new expedition was sent to the northwest under the command of Sir Thomas Button. It consisted of two ships, the “Resolution” and the “Discovery,” and was provisioned for eighteen months. “Concerning this voyage,” says Luke Fox, “there cannot bee much expected from me, seing that I have met with none of the Journalls thereof. It appeareth that they have been concealed, for what reasons I know not.”[199] Button sailed from England in the beginning of May, and entering Hudson’s Strait, crossed the Bay to the southern point of Southampton Island, which he named Carey’s Swan’s Nest. He then kept on toward the western side of the Bay, to which he gave the significant name “Hope’s Check,” and coasting along the shore he discovered the important river which he called Port Nelson, and which is now known as Nelson’s River. Here he wintered, “and kept three fires all the Winter, but lost many men, and yet was supplied with great store of white Partridges and other Fowle,” says Fox.[200] On the breaking up of the ice he made a thorough exploration of the bay and of Southampton Island, and finally returned to England in the autumn, having accomplished enough to give him a foremost rank among Arctic navigators.
A little less than a year and a half after Button’s return, Robert Bylot and William Baffin embarked on the first of the two voyages commonly associated with their names.
They sailed from the Scilly Islands on Good Friday, April 7, 1615, in the “Discovery,” a ship of about fifty-five tons, in which Bylot had already made three voyages to the northwest. Following a course already familiar to him, they passed through Hudson’s Strait, and ascended what is now known as Fox Channel. Here and at the western end of Hudson’s Strait they spent about three weeks, and then sailed for home, where they arrived in the early part of September.
SIR THOMAS SMITH.
Passe’s engraving is very rare. It is also reproduced by Markham, in whose Introduction are accounts of Smith, Sir Dudley Digges, Sir John Wolstenholme, and other eminent patrons of Arctic exploration in that day. See Belknap’s American Biography, ii. 9.
Their next voyage was one of far greater interest and importance, and ranks among the most famous of the Arctic voyages. They sailed again in the “Discovery,” leaving Gravesend on the 26th of March, 1616, with a company numbering in all seventeen persons; and coasting along the western shore of Greenland and through Davis Strait, they visited and explored both shores of the great sea which has ever since borne the name of Baffin’s Bay. Here they discovered and named the important channels known as Lancaster Sound and Jones Sound, beside numerous smaller bodies of water and numerous islands since become familiar to Arctic voyagers. All this was accomplished in a short season, and on the 30th of August they cast anchor at Dover on their return.
Fifteen years elapsed, during which no important attempt was made toward the discovery of a northwest passage; but in 1631 two voyages were undertaken, to one of which we owe the quaint, gossippy narrative entitled Northwest Fox, or Fox from the Northwest Passage. Luke Fox, its author, was a Yorkshireman, of keen sense and great perseverance, as well as a skilful navigator. He had long been interested in northwest explorations; and, according to his own account, he wished to go as mate with Knight twenty-five years before. At length he succeeded in interesting a number of London merchants and other persons in the enterprise, and on the 5th of May, 1631, he set sail from Deptford in the “Charles,” a pinnace of seventy tons, victualled for eighteen months. He searched the western part of Hudson’s Bay, discovered the strait and shore known as Sir Thomas Roe’s Welcome, sailed up Fox Channel to a point within the Arctic Circle, and satisfied himself, by a careful observation of the tides, of the existence of the long-sought passage, but failed to discover it. On his return he cast anchor in the Downs on the 31st of October, “not having lost one Man, nor Boy, nor Soule, nor any manner of Tackling, having beene forth neere six moneths. All glory be to God!”[201]
On the same day on which Fox began his voyage, Captain Thomas James sailed from the Severn in a new vessel of seventy tons, named the “Maria,” manned by twenty-two persons, and, like Fox’s vessel, victualled for eighteen months. On his outward voyage he encountered many perils, and on more than one occasion his vessel barely escaped shipwreck. His explorations were confined to the waters of Hudson’s Bay, and more particularly to its southeastern part, where he wintered on Charlton Island. Here he built a house in which the ship’s company lived from December until June, enduring as best they might all the horrors of an Arctic winter on an island only a little north of the latitude of London. On the 2d of July they again set sail, but were so hampered by ice that their progress was very slow, and in the latter part of August James, with the unanimous concurrence of his officers, determined to return home. He arrived at Bristol on the 22d of October, 1632, having added almost nothing to the knowledge gained by Fox in a third of the time.
A PART OF JAMES’S MAP.
[This is the southwest corner of a folding map, 16 × 12 inches, entitled “The Platt of Sayling for the discoverye of a passage into the South Sea, 1631,1632,” which belongs to James’s Strange and Dangerous Voyage, London, 1633. Mr. Charles Deane has two copies, both with photographic fac-similes of the map made from the copy now in the Barlow Library, New York. The Harvard College copy is defective. The map has a portrait of James, “ætatis suæ, 40.” (Cf. Sabin’s Dictionary, ix. 35,711; Carter-Brown Catalogue, ii. no. 400. Quaritch priced it in 1872, £36.) The narrative was reprinted in 1740, and is in the Collections of Churchill and Harris.—Ed.]
Both voyages were substantially failures, and their want of success nearly put an end to northwestern explorations. It was more than a hundred years before the matter was again taken up in any deliberate and efficient manner. But in the long list of Arctic navigators there are no greater names than those of Frobisher, Davis, Hudson, and Baffin. With means utterly disproportioned, as it now seems, to the task which they undertook, these men accomplished results which have called forth the admiration of more than one of their successors. They did not find the new and more direct way to Cathay which they sought for; but they dispelled many geographical illusions, and every fresh advance in our knowledge of the Arctic regions has only confirmed the accuracy of their statements. The story of these later explorations belongs to another part of this History; and we shall there see an energy and perseverance and an heroic endurance of hardship for the solution of great geographical problems not unworthy of the men whose voyages have been here narrated.
CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.
A COMPLETE bibliography of the northwest explorations is apart from our present purpose.[202] The principal works used in the preparation of the preceding narrative were almost all of them written by the men who were the chief actors in the scenes and incidents described, or are based on the original journals of those men. Their general accuracy and trustworthiness have never been challenged, and with some unimportant exceptions the statements of the early navigators have been confirmed by their successors. The men who first encountered the perils of those unknown seas were men of plain, straightforward character, who told in simple and unpretentious words what they saw and did. Some rectifications of their opinions and descriptions have, it is true, become necessary; in part through the imperfections of the early astronomical instruments, and in part through the difficulty, often very great, of deciding what was land and what water, even from the most careful observation. As a general rule, the early latitudes are given too high from the first of these causes; but the longitudes are substantially correct.
Of the works which are mainly compilations, the undisputed pre-eminence belongs to Hakluyt’s Voyages and Purchas’s Pilgrimes. Hakluyt was an enthusiast with regard to western discoveries, and he spared neither time nor labor to obtain trustworthy information with regard to the voyages in which he took so deep an interest. His narratives of the early voyages, so far as we have the means of verifying them, follow with almost entire accuracy the original documents, though in a few instances he has abbreviated his originals, apparently from motives of economy and the want of space. In these instances, however, the republication of the narratives by the Hakluyt Society, with the learned annotations of their thoroughly competent editors, places before the reader an exact copy of the originals. Purchas is an authority of less importance than Hakluyt, but a similar remark will apply to his accounts of the early voyages, though they are more abridged than Hakluyt’s. Luke Fox prefixed to his quaint and fascinating narrative of his own voyage an account of what had been done by his predecessors, and this must be classed among the best authorities. Of the later compilations the Chronological History[203] of Sir John Barrow, so far as it covers the earlier period, should not be overlooked by any one who wishes for a full summary of what was accomplished. He was scarcely less of an enthusiast than was Hakluyt; and his statements of fact are apparently indisputable. But he was a man of strong and often of unreasonable prejudices, and his opinions, particularly regarding events near his own time, cannot always be accepted without a careful investigation of their grounds. The Narratives,[204] edited by Mr. Rundall for the Hakluyt Society, must also be classed with the compilations useful in this study.
As an attempt to find a practicable passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific, either through or around North America, every voyage early and late was a failure. The theories in accordance with which northwestern explorations were first undertaken were unsound, and the objects by which they were inspired found realization long ago in quite other ways. But not the less did those theories and those objects animate men with a zeal and self-sacrifice worthy of the Crusades, and produce results of great importance. No easier route to China and Japan was discovered to enrich the fortunate adventurers; no valuable territories were added to the realm of England; and it was an utterly barren sovereignty which Frobisher and his successors claimed. But for the disappointment of these expectations there was an ample compensation in the whaling grounds to which they pointed the way, and which have proved the fruitful source of large accessions to the wealth of nations;[205] and it was something to learn, almost from the first, that the gold mines from which so much was expected were only a delusion and a snare.
We subjoin a specific mention of some of the more important separate sources. For Frobisher the student may refer to Admiral Collinson’s excellent gathering for the Hakluyt Society, as embodying the earliest monographic literature upon the Northwest search.[206] Of John Davis of Sandridge, whose exploits we are concerned with, there has sometimes been confusion with a namesake and contemporary, John Davis of Limehouse, and Mr. Froude has confounded them in his Forgotten Worthies; but a note in the Hakluyt Society’s edition of Davis’s Voyages, p. lxxviii, makes clear the distinction, and is not the least of the excellences of that book, which contains the best grouping of all that is to be learned of Davis.[207]
Referring to the general collections, for the intervening voyages we come to Hudson’s explorations, and must still trust chiefly to the work of the Hakluyt Society,[208] to which must also be credited the best summary of the voyages conducted by Baffin.[209]
For Fox’s quaint and somewhat capriciously rambling narrative, the present reader may possibly chance upon an original copy,[210] but he can follow it at all events in modern collections. The author accompanied it with a circumpolar map, which is only to be found, according to Markham, in one or two copies; and a fac-simile of Markham’s excerpt of the parts interesting in our inquiry is herewith given.
EDITORIAL NOTES.
A. The Zeno Influence on Early Cartography.—Frobisher’s reference to Friesland indicates the influence which the Zeno map, then for hardly a score of years before the geographers of Europe, was having upon their notions regarding the North Atlantic.
THE ZENO CHART, circa 1400.
Of this map and its curious history a full account is given in Vol. I. of the present History. It had been brought to light in Italy in 1558, and Frobisher is said to have taken it with him on his voyage. Its errors in latitude deceived that navigator. When he fell in with the Greenland shore, in 61°, he supposed himself to be at the southern limit of Friesland, that being Zeno’s latitude for that point (the southern point of his Greenland being in 66°); and thus that unaccountable insular region of the Zeno chart was put anew into the maps of the North Atlantic, and remained there for some time. Again, when Davis fell in with land in 61°, he thought it neither Friesland nor Zeno’s Greenland, but a new country, which he had found and which he named “Desolation;” and so it appears in Molineaux’s map and globe, and in Hudson’s map (given in fac-simile in Asher’s Henry Hudson), as an island south of Greenland, with a misplaced Frobisher’s Straits (still misplaced as late as the time of Hondius) separating it from Greenland. Our Zeno chart must be interpreted by the following key:—
1. Engronelant (Greenland).
2. Grolandia.
3. Islanda (Iceland).
4. Norvegia (Norway).
5. Estland (Shetland Islands?).
6. Icaria.
7. Frisland (Faroe Islands?).
8. Estotiland (Labrador?).
9. Drogeo (Newfoundland or New England?).
10. Podalida.
11. Scocia (Scotland).
12. Mare et terre incognite.
Its influence can be further traced, twenty years later, in the map of the world which Wolfe, in 1598, added to his English translation of Linschoten. We annex a sketch-map of the Arctic portion, which needs to be interpreted by the key below the cut.
FROM WOLFE’S LINSCHOTEN, 1598.
1. Terra Septemtrionalis.
2. Grocland.
3. Groenland.
4. Island (Iceland).
5. Friesland.
6. Drogeo.
7. Estotiland.
8. R. Nevado.
9. C. Marco.
10. Gol di S. Lorenzo.
11. Saguenay flu.
12. Canada.
13. Nova Francia.
14. Norōbega.
15. Terra de Baccalaos.
16. Do Bretan.
17. Juan.
18. R. de Tomēta.
19. S. Brādam.
20. Brasil.
Considering the doubt attached to the Zeno chart, it would seem that the earliest undoubted delineation of American parts of the Arctic land is the representation of Greenland which appears in the Ptolemy of 1482. This position of Greenland was reproduced, about ten years before Frobisher’s voyage, in Olaus Magnus’s Latin Historia, Basil, 1567, who puts on the peninsula this legend: “Hic habitant Pygmei vulgo Screlinger dicti.” There had been an earlier Latin edition of the Historia at Rome in 1555, and one in Italian at Venice in 1565: there was no English edition till 1658. (Carter-Brown Catalogue, p. 269.) Ziegler’s Schondia had in Frobisher’s time been for forty years or more a source of information regarding the most northern regions. (Carter-Brown Catalogue, pp. 103, 120, for editions of 1532 and 1536.)
The cartographical ideas of the North from the earliest conceptions may be traced in the following maps, which for this purpose may be deemed typical: In 1510-12, in the Lenox Globe, which is drawn in Dr. De Costa’s chapter; the map in Sylvanus’s Ptolemy, 1511, represents Greenland as protruding from the northwest of Europe; the globe of Orontius Fine, 1531, is resolvable into a similar condition, as shown on page 11 of the present volume; Mercator’s great map of 1569, blundering, mixes the Zeno geography with the later developments; Gilbert’s map, 1576, gives an insular Greenland of a reversed trend of coast; the Lok map of 1582 may be seen on page 40, and the Hakluyt-Martyr map on page 42. The map of America showing the Arctic Sea which appears in Boterus’s Welt-beschreibung, 1596, and Acosta’s map (1598) of Greenland and adjacent parts, can be compared with Wolfe’s, in Linschoten, already given in this note. Finally, we may take the Hondius maps of 1611 and 1619, in which Hondius places at 80° north this legend: “Glacis ab Hudsono detecta.”
B. Frobisher’s Voyages.—George Beste’s True Discourse of Discoverie by the North Weast, 1578, covers the three voyages, and contains two maps,—one a mappemonde, the most significant since Mercator’s, and of which in part a fac-simile is here given. The other is of Frobisher’s Straits alone. Kohl, Catalogue of Maps mentioned in Hakluyt, p. 18, traces the authorship of these charts to James Beare, Frobisher’s principal surveyor. Compare it with Lok’s map, page 40, of the present volume.
PART OF MAP IN BESTE’S “FROBISHER,” 1578.
Beste’s book is very rare, and copies are in the Lenox and Carter-Brown libraries. It is reprinted by Hakluyt.
Beste’s general account may be supplemented by these special narratives:—
First Voyage. A State-paper given by Collinson, “apparently by M. Lok.” The narrative by Christopher Hall, the master, in Hakluyt. See an examination of its results in Contemporary Review (1873), xxi. 529, or Eclectic Review, iii. 243.
Second Voyage. Dionysius Settle’s account, published separately in 1577. Carter-Brown Catalogue, no. 206, with fac-simile of title. It was reprinted by Mr. Carter-Brown (50 copies) in 1869. See notice by J. R. Bartlett in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1869, p. 363. This narrative is given in Hakluyt, vol. iii.; Pinkerton, vol. xii.; Brydge’s Restituta, 1814, vol. ii. Chippin’s French version of Settle, La Navigation du Cap. Martin Forbisher, was printed in 1578. It is in the Lenox and Carter-Brown libraries. It has reappeared at various dates, 1720, 1731, etc. From this French version of Settle was made the Latin, De Martini Forbisseri Angli navigatione in regiones occidentis et septentrionis, narratio historica ex Gallico sermone in Latinum translata per D. Joan Tho. Freigium, Norbergæ, 1580, 44 leaves. This is also in the Lenox, Carter-Brown, and Sparks (Cornell University) Collections. Cf. Sunderland Catalogue, ii. 4,650. Its value is from $10 to $30. It was reprinted with notes at Hamburg in 1675. Stevens, Hist. Coll., i. 33. Brinley, no. 28. Sabin, Dictionary, vii. 25,994. This edition is usually priced at $12 or $15. There are also German (1580, 1679, etc.) and Dutch (1599, 1663, 1678; in Aa’s Collection, 1706) editions. In the 1580 German edition is a woodcut of the natives brought to England. Huth Catalogue, ii. 556.
Third Voyage. Thomas Ellis’s narrative, given by Hakluyt and Collinson. Edward Sellman’s account is also given by Collinson.
Collinson’s life of Frobisher, prefixed to his volume, is brief; his authorities, other than those in the body of his book, are Fuller’s Worthies of England, and such modern treatises as Campbell’s Lives of the Admirals, Barrow’s Naval Worthies, Muller’s History of Doncaster, etc. S. G. Drake furnished a memoir, with a good engraving of the usual portrait, in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., vol. iii.; and there is a Life by F. Jones, London, 1878. Biddle, in his Cabot, chap. 12, epitomizes the voyages, and they can be cursorily followed in Fox Bourne’s English Seamen, and Payne’s Elizabethan Seamen. Commander Becher, in his paper in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, xii. 1, gives a useful map of the Straits, a part of which is reproduced in the accompanying cut. In the same volume of the Journal its editor enumerates the various manuscript sources, most of which have been printed, and have been referred to above.
FROBISHER’S STRAIT.
C. Hudson’s Voyages.—The sources of our information on this navigator’s four voyages to the North are these:—
First voyage in 1607, under the auspices of the Muscovy Company, to the Northeast. A log-book, in which Hudson may have had a hand, or to which he may have supplied facts; and a few fragments of his own journal. Purchas’s Pilgrims, vol. iii.; Asher’s Henry Hudson, pp. i and 145.
Second voyage, 1608, under the auspices of the Muscovy Company, to the Northeast. A log-book by Hudson himself. Purchas’s Pilgrims, iii. 574; N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., i. 81; Asher’s Hudson, p. 23.
A map by Hondius illustrating the first and second voyage, and given by Asher in fac-simile, was originally published in Pontanus’s History of Amsterdam, Latin ed. 1611, and Dutch ed. 1614.
Third voyage, 1609, under the auspices of the East India Company, to the Northeast, where, foiled by the ice, he turned and sailed to make explorations between the coast of Maine and Delaware Bay. The journal of Juet, his companion. Purchas’s Pilgrims, vol. iii.; Asher’s Hudson, p. 45. See further in Mr. Fernow’s chapter in Vol. IV. of this History.
Fourth voyage, 1610, to the Northwest, discovering Hudson’s Strait and Hudson’s Bay. Purchas, Pilgrims, vol. iii., got his account from Sir Dudley Digges. He also gives an abstract of Hudson’s journal (Asher, p. 93); a discourse by Pricket, one of the crew, whom Purchas discredits, which is largely an apology for the mutiny which set Hudson adrift in an open boat in the bay now bearing his name (Asher, p. 98); a letter from Iceland, May 30, 1610, perhaps by Hudson himself, and an account of Juet’s trial (Asher, p. 136). Purchas added some new facts in his Pilgrimage, reprinted in Asher, p. 139.
H. Gerritsz seized the opportunity, occasioned by the interest in Hudson’s voyage and his fate, to promulgate his views of the greater chance of finding a northwest passage to India, rather than a northeast one; and in the little collection of tracts edited by him, produced first in the Dutch edition of 1612, he gives but a very brief narrative of Hudson’s voyage, which is printed on the reverse of the map showing his discoveries,—the maps, which he gives, both of the world and of the north parts of America being the chief arguments of his book, the latter map being also reproduced by Asher. The original Dutch edition is extremely scarce, but four or five copies being known. A reproduction of it in 1878 by Kroon, through the photo-lithographic process, consists of 200 copies, and contains also, under the general title of Detectio freti Hudsoni, a reproduction of the Latin edition of 1613, with an English version by F. J. Millard, and an Introductory Essay on the origin and design of this collection, which, besides Gerritsz’s tract, includes others by Massa and De Quir. Sabin’s Dictionary, viii. 33,489; Asher’s Hudson, p. 267.
In the enlarged Latin translation, ordinarily quoted as the Detectio freti Hudsoni of 1612, Gerritsz inverted the order of the several tracts, giving more prominence to Hudson, as May’s expedition to the northeast had in the mean time returned unsuccessful. Huth Catalogue, ii. 744, shows better than Brunet, iii. 358, the difference between this 1612 and the 1613 editions. H. C. Murphy’s Henry Hudson in Holland. The Carter-Brown Catalogue, ii. 131, gives this little quarto the following title: Descriptio ac delineatio Geographica detectionis freti sive, Transitus ad Occasum, suprà terras Americanas in Chinam atq: Iaponem ducturi, Recens investigati ab M. Henrico Hudsono Anglo, etc., and cites the world in two hemispheres as among the three maps which it contains. A copy in Mr. Henry C. Murphy’s collection has a second title, which shows that Vitellus and not Gerritsz made the Latin translation. This other title reads: Exemplar Libelli ... super Detectione quintæ Orbis terrarum partiscui Australiæ Incognitæ nomen est: item Relatio super Freto per M. Hudsonum Anglum quæsito, ac in parte dedecte supra Provincias Terræ Novæ, novæque Hispaniæ, Chinam, et Cathaiam versus ducturo ... Latine versa ab R. Vitellio, Amstelodami ex officina Hessilii Gerardi. Anno 1612. Speaking of this little tract and the share which Gerritsz had in it, Asher, in his Henry Hudson the Navigator, says, “Around it grew in a very remarkable manner the most interesting of the many collections of voyages and travels printed in the early part of the sixteenth century.”
In a second Latin edition, 1613, Gerritsz again remodelled his additions, and gave a further account of May’s voyage. Huth Catalogue, ii. 744; Carter-Brown Catalogue, ii. 152; Tièle, Mémoire bibliographique, 1867, no. 153; Muller’s Essai d’une bibliographie néerlando-russe, 1859, p. 71.
To some copies of this second edition Gerritsz added a short appendix of two leaves, Sig. G, which is reprinted in the Kroon reproduction, and serves to make some bibliographers reckon a third Latin edition. There are in the Lenox Library six copies of the original, representing the different varieties of the Dutch and Latin texts. One of the copies in Harvard College Library has these two additional leaves, which are also in the copy in the Carter-Brown Library, whose Catalogue, ii. 152, says that the fac-simile reprint by Muller must have been made from a copy with different cuts and ornamental capitals and tail-pieces, as these are totally different from those of the Carter-Brown copy. The map of the world was repeated in this edition.
The original Dutch text has been reprinted in several later collections of voyages, published in Holland. The English translation in Purchas is incomplete and incorrect; and that of Millard, as well as the English generally in the Kroon reprint, could have been much bettered by a competent native proof-reader.
German versions appeared in De Bry and in Megiser’s Septentrio novantiquus, p. 438, both in 1613; and in 1614 in Hulsius, part xii.
There is a French translation in the Receuil d’Arrests of 1720.