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And all this happened far away to the north, beyond Labrador, beyond Hudson's Strait, where the great tides heave the ice about, north of Melville Peninsula north even of the narrow Fury and Hecla Straits on the north shore of Baffin Land, where Bylot's Island stands above the ice of Lancaster Sound like a pudding-bowl wrong side up.
About the middle of July he reached the latitude of 73°, after having made many fruitless attempts to cross the ice that fills the central portion of Davis's Strait and Baffin's Bay. the instructions of Captain Parry particularly pointed out the sound which Captain Ross had left unexplored, and which there could be no doubt was the Sir James Lancaster's Sound of Baffin, to be most carefully and minutely examined, as the one by which it was most probable a north-west passage might be effected, or which, at least, even if not navigable, on account of the ice, would connect the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
He found no trace of Hudson, nor a passage to the South Sea; but he gave his mate's name Baffin to the lonely land that lines the northern side of the straits.
Baffin, in 1616, found the Straits of Lancaster in the sea that bears his own name; he was followed, in 1619, by James Munk, and in 1719 by Knight, Barlow, Vaughan, and Scroggs, of whom no news has ever been heard.
The fear arose that perhaps they had foundered with all hands in the open waters of Baffin Bay, leaving no trace behind. Even the naval men began to shake their heads. Captain Sir John Ross wrote to the Admiralty to express his fear that Franklin's ships had been frozen in in such a way that their return was impossible. The Admiralty took advice.
Ships and boats had made their way from Bering Strait to the Coppermine. North of this they had gone from Baffin Bay through Lancaster Sound and on westward to a great sea called Melville Sound, a body of water larger than the Irish Sea. The two lines east and west overlapped widely. All that was needed now was to find a channel north and south to connect the two.
A curiously suggestive interest, however, attaches to the fact that at just about the time when the trial ended one of them, and the only conspicuous one of them, seems permanently to have disappeared. That most careful investigator the late Mr. Alexander Brown was unable to find any sure trace of Byleth after his second voyage with Baffin, which was made in March-August, 1616.
This corner was precisely the boreal lands and seas of North America. The list of Polar discoveries may be thus written: Nova Zembla, discovered by Willoughby, in 1553; Weigatz Island, by Barrough, in 1556; the West Coast of Greenland, by Davis, in 1585; Davis's Straits, by Davis, in 1587; Spitzbergen, by Willoughby, in 1596; Hudson's Bay, by Hudson, in 1610; Baffin's Bay, by Baffin, in 1616.
Land, destroy decent, harmless creatures like the southern right whale or the bowhead whale, they commit a reprehensible offense. Thus they've already depopulated all of Baffin Bay, and they'll wipe out a whole class of useful animals. So leave these poor cetaceans alone. They have quite enough natural enemies, such as sperm whales, swordfish, and sawfish, without you meddling with them."
Hudson and Frobisher, Fox, Baffin, Davis, and James, how little thought they of that vast continent whose presence was but an obstacle in the path of their discovery! Hudson had long perished in the ocean which bears his name before it was known to be a cul-de-sac.
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