[44] Maldonado, a Spaniard, published an account of a navigable strait, called the Strait of Anian, from the east side of America to the Pacific, coming out north of Cape Mendocino in California.

[45] Chancellor had used the cross-staff. Frobisher had been supplied with a similar instrument called a “ballestilla,” which he used in preference to the astrolabe, both being among the instruments and charts bought at a cost of £47. 0s. 8d. of Humphrey Cole and others. The cross-staff was described by Gemma Frisius, and Gunter’s was a yard long, with a cross-piece of 26½ inches. The staff, which was of wood, was graduated, and the cross-piece was moved along it until, looking through the sight near the eye, the two objects were covered of which the angle was to be measured. In observing for the latitude the two objects were the sun and the horizon, the angle giving the altitude.

[46] The authorities for the Arctic voyages of Frobisher are first the interesting narrative of George Best (Hakluyt, III) and the narrative of Dionise Settle (Hakluyt, III); Christopher Hall’s account in the Harl. MSS. 167, fol. 165; the Journal of the Judith, Harl. MSS. 167, fol 41; Edward Sellman, Narrative of Thomas Ellis (Hakluyt, III); State Papers (Dom., Eliz.). Admiral Sir Richard Collinson edited the Voyages of Frobisher for the Hakluyt Society. There is a well written and painstaking life of Sir Martin Frobisher by the Rev. Frank Jones (Longman, 1878).

[47] Mr Miller Christy very thoroughly investigated the question of the Land of Busse, and wrote an exhaustive monograph on the subject. See Hakluyt Society’s No. XCVI, Appendix B.

[48] The following names were given by Frobisher to places discovered on his voyages:—

[49] It must be remembered that Davis was entirely ignorant of the Norse colony and of the Icelandic Sagas, which were only brought to light by Professor Rafn in our own day.

[50] The narratives of the first and third voyages were written by Mr Janes, those of the second by Davis himself. They are all in Hakluyt, and, with the other writings of Davis, have been edited for the Hakluyt Society by Admiral Sir Albert Markham. The present writer’s life of Davis, which records his great services in much more detail than is here possible, was published in 1889.

[51] An account of the contents of The Seaman’s Secrets is given in the present writer’s life of Davis, and it is printed in extenso in Admiral Sir Albert Markham’s Voyages of John Davis.

[52] This is now in the Museum at Greenwich.