e, 'but a great
sea, free, large, very salt and blue and of an unsearchable depth. It
seemed most manifest that the passage was free and without impediment
towards the north.'

When Davis returned home, he was still eager to try again. But the
situation was changed. Walsingham, who had encouraged his enterprise,
was dead, and the whole energy of the nation was absorbed in the great
struggle with Spain. Davis sailed no more to the northern seas. With
each succeeding decade it became clear that the hopes aroused by the
New World lay not in finding a passage by the ice-blocked sounds of the
north, but in occupying the vast continent of America itself. Many
voyages were indeed attempted before the hope of a northern passage to
the Indies was laid aside. Weymouth, Knight, and others followed in
the track of Frobisher and Davis. But nothing new was found. The
sea-faring spirit and the restless adventure which characterized the
Elizabethan period outlived the great queen. The famous voyage of
Henry Hudson in 1610 revealed the existence of the great inland sea
which bears his name. {32} Hudson, already famous as an explorer and
for his discovery of the Hudson river, was sent out by Sir John
Wolstenholme and Sir Dudley Digges to find the North-West Passage. The
story of his passage of the strait, his discovery of the great bay, the
mutiny of his men and his tragic and mysterious fate forms one of the
most thrilling narratives in the history of exploration. But it
belongs rather to the romantic story of the great company whose
corporate title recalls his name and memory, than to the present
narrative.

After Hudson came the exploits of Bylot, one of his pilots, and a
survivor of the tragedy, and of William Baffin, who tried to follow
Davis's lead in searching for the Western Passage in the very confines
of the polar sea. Finally there came (1631) the voyage of Captain Luke
Fox, who traversed the whole western coast of Hudson Bay and proved
that from the main body of its waters there was no outlet to the
Pacific. The hope of a North-West Passage in the form of a wide and
glittering sea, an easy passage to Asia, was dead. Other causes were
added to divert attention from the northern waters. The definite
foundation of the colonies of Virginia and Massachusetts Bay opened the
path to new {33} hopes and even wider ambitions of Empire. Then, as
the seventeenth century moved on its course, the shadow of civil strife