made
a brave show by the discharge of their ordnance. Elizabeth waved her
hand from a window to the departing ships and sent one of her gentlemen
aboard to say that she had 'a good liking of their doings.' From such
small acts of royal graciousness has often sprung a wonderful devotion.

Frobisher's little ships struck boldly out on the Atlantic. They ran
northward first, and crossed the ocean along the parallel of sixty
degrees north latitude. Favourable winds and strong gales bore them
rapidly across the sea. On July 11, they sighted the southern capes of
Greenland, or Frisland, as they called it, that rose like pinnacles of
steeples, snow-crowned and glittering on the horizon. They essayed a
landing, but the masses of shore ice and the {12} drifting fog baffled
their efforts. Here off Cape Desolation the full fury of the Arctic
gales broke upon their ships. The little pinnace foundered with all
hands. The _Michael_ was separated from her consort in the storm, and
her captain, losing heart, made his way back to England to report
Frobisher cast away. But no terror of the sea could force Frobisher
from his purpose. With his single ship the _Gabriel_, its mast sprung,
its top-mast carried overboard in the storm, he drove on towards the
west. He was 'determined,' so writes a chronicler of his voyages, 'to
bring true proof of what land and sea might be so far to the
northwestwards beyond any that man hath heretofore discovered.' His
efforts were rewarded. On July 28, a tall headland rose on the
horizon, Queen Elizabeth's Foreland, so Frobisher named it. As the
_Gabriel_ approached, a deep sound studded with rocky islands at its
mouth opened to view. Its position shows that the vessel had been
carried northward and westward past the coast of Labrador and the
entrance of Hudson Strait. The voyagers had found their way to the
vast polar island now known as Baffin Island. Into this, at the point
which the ship had reached, there extends a deep inlet, {13} called
after its discoverer, Frobisher's Strait. Frobisher had found a new
land, and its form, with a great sea passage running westward and land
both north and south of it, made him think that this was truly the
highway to the Orient. He judged that the land seen to the north was
part of Asia, reaching out and overlapping the American continent. For
many days heavy weather and fog and the danger of the drifting ice
prevented a landing. The month of Aug