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12S Editor’s Postscript. name. Returning full of hopes to Portugal, Corterfial was sent out the next season, to prosecute his discovery. No accounts of him being received, his brother went after him ; but neither of the brothers were ever more heard of. Many years afterwards, viz. in 1576, Martin Frobisher attempted to pass to China round the northern coasts of America. He left England in July with two small vessels and a pinnace, the largest only 25 tons, and proceeding to what he supposed was a strait in N. lat. 63° 10', he returned to England in the beginning of October. On a second voyage he arrived on the west coast of Greenland, and brought home certain sparkling stones, supposed to contain gold. Fro bisher’s third voyage, with many ships and a number of colonists, was defeated by the ice, and he returned once more unsuccessful. In 1585 a fresh attempt to discover the North-west passage was made by a number of noblemen and gentlemen of England, who dispatched John Davis, a Devonshire-man, on the pursuit. On the 20th July he came on the southern point of Greenland, which he very naturally named Cape Desolation. In this voyage, and in a second of the following year, he never reached beyond lat. 66° 40'; but in his third, in 1587, he penetrated through the strait now known by his name, as far as lat. 72° 12'. Then direct ing his course westward, his people were alarmed at the ice, and he returned to England in September. The failures of Davis did not quite discourage other adventu rers in the north-west expedition ; but none of them had any success. At last Capt. Henry Hudson, a skilful and intrepid seaman, who had before endeavoured to penetrate to China along the north of Europe and Asia, was in 1610 sent out by a com pany of English merchants, to make his way by the north of Ame rica. Penetrating by the strait now known by his name, he en tered the great bay, and standing southwards to the bottom, where he purposed to collect game and other provisions, and pass the winter, in order to prosecute his researches at the first favourable season, his people mutinied, and turned the unfortunate Hudson, with his son and five other persons, adrift in a boat, amidst the ice, where he no doubt soon perished. Two years afterwards, in 1612, Sir Thomas Button undertook the search for a north-west passage. Passing through Hudson’s Strait he came on the con tinent of America, in N. lat. 60° 40'. He wintered in Port Nel son, so called from his pilot, in lat. 57° 40', now the principal station of the Hudson’s Bay Company. In 1616, Baffin and Bylot reached northwards through Davis’s Strait, and the bay named after Baffin, as far as N. lat. 78 0 - Then turning down by the west coast, they passed Alderman Jones’s Sound, and opened Sir James Lancaster’s Sound, and returned to England. In 1741, Captain Middleton, of the navy, was sent out to pur-