United States or Laos ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The upper white blink referred to ice about six miles distant, being beyond the horizon; the narrow yellowish portions referred to floes and compact ice; the lowest yellow blink, which in brightness and colour resembled the moon, was the reflection of a field at the distance of thirty miles, to which, directed by the blink, we made way in the Baffin, through the channels of water represented in the sky by bluish-grey streaks.
Baffin describes this sound as a large inlet, and adds, that the coast tended to the southward, and had the appearance of a bay. This is confirmed by Captain Ross; for he informs us that the land was observed to take a southerly direction.
Between 1602 and 1668, English adventurers from London and Bristol, notable amongst whom were WILLIAM BAFFIN, LUKE FOX, and CAPTAIN JAMES, mapped the coasts of Hudson's Bay and Baffin's Bay and brought to the notice of merchants in England the abundance of whales in these Arctic waters, and of fur-bearing beasts and fur-trading Indians in the region of Hudson's Bay.
Even the excursions of Davis, Frobisher, Hudson, and Baffin in pursuit of the north-west passage, and of Barentz and Chancellor in search of the north-east passage, were really in pursuit of mercantile ends.
On the northern ice-bound coast, the skin-clothed Esquimaux wander in small bands from Behring Strait to Baffin Bay, but never venture far inland, being kept in check by their hereditary enemies, the Athabascas, the most northern of the red-skinned nations. The Esquimaux, inhabiting the Arctic regions, may more properly be described in the volume devoted to that part of the globe.
We shall have occasion again to speak of Dampier with relation to the voyages of Wood Rodgers. Hudson and Baffin Champlain and La Sale The English upon the coast of the Atlantic The Spaniards in South America Summary of the information acquired at the close of the 17th century The measure of the terrestrial degree Progress of cartography Inauguration of Mathematical Geography.
Word Of The Day