und the continent at its southern extremity, and turned
his daring prows into that world of waters of seemingly
illimitable width. But the route thus laid out was far too
long for the feeble commerce of that early day, and various
efforts were made to pass the line of the continent at some
northern point. The great rivers of North America, the
James, the Hudson, and others, were explored in the eager
hope that they might prove to be liquid canals between the
two great seas. But a more promising hope was that which
hinted that America might be circumnavigated at the north as
well as at the south, and the Pacific be reached by way of
the icy channel of the northern seas.

This hope, born so long ago, has but died out in our own
days. Much of the most thrilling literature of adventure of
the nineteenth century comes from the persistent efforts to
traverse these perilous Arctic ocean wastes. Let us go back
to the oldest of the daring navigators of this frozen sea,
the worthy knight Sir Martin Frobisher, and tell the story
of his notable efforts to discover a Northwest Passage, "the
only thing left undone," as he quaintly says, "whereby a
notable mind might become famous and fortunate."

As an interesting preface to our story we may quote from
that curious old tome, "Purchas his Pilgrimage," the
following quaintly imaginative passage,--

"How shall I admire your valor and courage, yee Marine
Worthies, beyond all names of worthinesse; that neither
dread so long either presense nor absence of the Sunne, nor
those foggie mists, tempestuous windes, cold blasts, snowes
and haile in the aire; nor the unequal Seas, where the
Tritons and Neptune's selfe would quake with chilling feare
to behold such monstrous Icie Islands, mustering themselves
in those watery plaines, where they hold a continuall civill
warre, rushing one upon another, making windes and waves
give back; nor the rigid, ragged face of the broken landes,
sometimes towering themselves to a loftie height, to see if
they can finde refuge from those snowes and colds that
continually beat them, sometimes hiding themselves under
some hollow hills or cliffes, sometimes sinking and
shrinking into valleys, looking pale with snowes and falling
in frozen and dead swounes: sometimes breaking their neckes
into the sea, rather embracing the waters' than the aires'
crueltie," and so on with the like labored fancies. "Great
God," he concludes, "to whom all names of greatnesse