ean is like getting out of a very cleverly arranged maze. There are
innumerable false exits, which have disappointed one Arctic explorer
after another. When they had discovered that Hudson's Bay to the south
was only like a great bottle, and had no outlet, they explored its
northern waters; and when they found Chesterfield Inlet on the
north-west, which leads into Baker Lake, they thought perhaps here was
the passage through into the Arctic Sea. But no; that was no good. To
the north of Chesterfield Inlet was a broad channel called Roe's
Welcome, which led into Wager Bay and through frozen straits into
Fox's Channel, and this again into Ross Bay. Here only a very narrow
isthmus separates Hudson's Bay from the Arctic Sea; but still it is an
isthmus of solid land. Turning to the north-east and north there are
the broad waters of Fox's Channel leading into Fox's Basin; but the
north-west corner of this inland sea was so blocked with ice and
islands that it was not until the year 1822 that the _real_ northern
outlet of Hudson's Bay was discovered by Captain EDWARD PARRY to be
the narrow Fury and Hecla Straits (the discovery was not completed
until 1839 by the Hudson's Bay Company's explorers T. SIMPSON and W.
DEASE).

Here you have found the way out into the Gulf of Boothia, which
communicates in the north with Barrow Strait and Baffin's Bay. But
across the supposed peninsula of Boothia there were discovered, in
1847, by Dr. JOHN RAE (also an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company)
the narrow Bellot Straits, which lead into Franklin Straits and so
into M'Clintock Channel and the Arctic Ocean. After this you might
theoretically (if the ice permitted it) sail or steam your ship
through Victoria Straits and Coronation Gulf till you got into
Beaufort Sea (part of the open Arctic Ocean), or, by turning round
Prince Albert Land, pass through the Prince of Wales' Straits or
M'Clure Straits into the same Beaufort Sea.

The North-West Passage across the Arctic extremity of North America,
therefore, _did_ exist after all, and the directest route would be up
Davis Straits, through Hudson's Straits into Fox's Basin, then through
the Fury and Hecla Straits into the Gulf of Boothia, then through the
Bellot Straits and Franklin Straits (past Victorialand and Kemp
Peninsula) and out through the Dolphin and Union Straits into the
Arctic Ocean, and so on round the north coast of Alaska, past Bering's
Straits into Bering Sea and the Pacific. B