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124 Editor's Postscript. sue the search. He entered Hudson’s Strait and stood to the northward, into what he termed Repulse Bay, because there he stated himself to be quite shut in by land on the north and west. The account he gave of his expedition was very unsatisfactory to the Admiralty; and, in consequence, by their suggestion, an Act of Parliament passed in 1743 (18 Geo. II.), granting a reward of 20,0001. to any British subject who should discover the north-west passage. Besides these and other real expeditions, in the year 1708 in London appeared an account of a voyage stated to have been performed in 1640, by Fuenta, or De Fonte, by the north-west passage. But that work is now considered merely as a romance, in which some facts, collected from other voyages, are inter spersed in a mass of fiction. . The whole is disavowed by the Spanish writers. Very lately an account has appeared of another voyage, said to have been accomplished in 1588, by a Spanish Captain, Laurence- Ferrer Maldonado, from the coast of Labrador, or the Esquimaux country on the north of the River St. Laurence to the Pacific Ocean. The original MS. of this voyage is said to be preserved among the papers of a Spanish nobleman of the first rank. In examining the MSS. in the Ambrosian Library, in Milan, one was discovered of Maldonado’s voyage, and lately published in Italian, it contains, however, so many errors in geographical science, that it seems best, in the present state of our knowledge of the original work, to suspend all judgement respecting its au thenticity. The letters contained in the preceding pages come no lower down than the 1st November, when the Griper arrived in Lerwick or Brassa Bay, in Shetland. It is necessary, however, to add, that the Hecla having suffered very severely in a gale of wind, before she came near those islands, was obliged to make all way for Leith, where she arrived, for the purpose of repair, on the 3cf of November. Captain Parry landing at Peterhead, reached London in the morning of the same day. Both ships entered the Thames in the middle of that month, and were paid off at Dept ford, on the 21st of December, 1820. THIS END.