We have already mentioned the earliest attempts to find out the Straits of Anian; the idea that they existed on the northwest coast of America seems to have been abandoned for some time, unless we suppose, that a voyage undertaken by the French in 1535 had for its object the discovery of these straits:  it is undoubted, that one of the objects of this voyage was to find a passage to India.  In this voyage, the river St. Lawrence was examined as far as Montreal.  In 1536, the English in vain endeavoured to find a north-west passage to India.  The result of this voyage was, however, important in one respect; as it gave vise to the very beneficial fishery of the English on the banks of Newfoundland.  The French had already engaged in this fishery.

In 1576, the idea of a north-west passage having been revived in England, Frobisher was sent in search of it, with two barks of twenty-five tons each, and one pinnace of ten tons.  He entered the strait, leading into what was afterwards called Hudson’s Bay:  this strait he named after himself.  He discovered the southern coast of Greenland; and picking up there some stone or ore which resembled gold, he returned to England.  The London goldsmiths having examined this, they reported that it contained a large proportion of gold.  This induced the Russian Company to send him out a second time, in 1577; but during this voyage, and a third in 1578, no discoveries of consequence were made.  In the years 1585, 86, and 87, Captain Davis, who was in the service of an English company of adventurers, made three voyages in search of a north-west passage.  In the first he proceded as far north as sixty-six degrees forty minutes, visited the southwest coast of Greenland, and gave his own name to the straits that separate it from America.  At this time the use of a kind of harpoon was known, by which they were enabled to kill porpoises; but though they saw many whales, they knew not the right manner of killing them.  In his second voyage an unsuccessful attempt was made to penetrate between Iceland and Greenland, but the ships were unable to penetrate beyond sixty-seven degrees north latitude.  The west coast of Greenland was examined; but not being able to sail along its north coast, he stretched across to America, which he examined to latitude fifty-four.  In his last voyage, Davis reached the west coast of Greenland, as far as latitude seventy-two.  All his endeavours, however, to find a north-west passage were ineffectual.

In 1607, Hudson, an experienced seaman of great knowledge and intrepidity, sailed in search of this passage.  He directed his course straight north, and reached the eighty-second degree of latitude, and the seventy-third degree of west longitude.  During this voyage more of the eastern coast of Greenland was discovered than had been previously known.  In his second voyage, which was undertaken in 1608, he endeavoured to sail between Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen, but unsuccessfully: