of this and his first voyage we have very imperfect accounts.  His third voyage was undertaken for the Dutch:  in this he discovered the river in America which bears his name.  His fourth and last voyage, in which he perished, and to which he owes his principal fame as a navigator, was in the service of the Russia Company of England.  In this voyage he reached the strait which bears his name:  his crew mutinied at this place, and setting him on shore, returned to England.  As soon as the Russia Company learned the fate of Hudson, they sent one Captain Button in search of him, and also to explore the straits which he had discovered:  in this voyage Hudson’s Bay was discovered.  Button’s journal was never published:  it is said, however, to have contained some important observations on the tides, and other objects of natural philosophy.

The existence of such a bay as Hudson’s was described to be, induced the merchants of England to believe that they had at length found out the entrance to a passage which would lead them to the East Indies:  many voyages were therefore undertaken, in a very short time after this bay had been discovered.  The most important was that of Bylot and Baffin:  they advanced through Davis’s Straits into an extensive sea, which they called Baffin’s Bay:  they proceeded, according to their account, as far north as the latitude 78 deg..  The nature and extent of this discovery was very much doubted at the time, and subsequently, till the discoveries of Captains Ross and Parry, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, proved that Baffin was substantially accurate and faithful.

Baffin’s voyage took place in the year 1616:  after this there was no voyage undertaken with the same object, till the year 1631, when Captain Fox sailed from Deptford.  He had been used to the sea from his youth, and had employed his leisure time in collecting all the information he could possibly obtain, respecting voyages, to the north.  He was besides well acquainted with some celebrated mathematicians and cosmographers, particularly Thomas Herne, who had carefully collected all the journals and charts of the former voyages, with a view to his business, which was that of a maker of globes.  When Fox was presented to Charles I, his majesty gave him a map, containing all the discoveries which had been made in the north seas.  He discovered several islands during the voyage, but not the passage he sought for; though he is of opinion, that if a passage is to be found, it must be in Sir Thomas Roe’s Welcome,—­a bay he discovered near an island of that name, in north latitude 64 deg. 10’, not far from the main land, on the west side of Hudson’s Bay.  He published a small treatise on the voyage, called The North-west Fox, which contains many important facts and judicious observations on the ice, the tides, compass, northern lights, &c.  Captain James sailed on the same enterprise nearly at the same time that Fox did.  His account was printed by King Charles’s command, in 1633:  it contains some remarkable physical observations respecting the intenseness of the cold, and the accumulation of ice, in northern latitudes; but no discovery of moment.  He was of opinion, that no north-west passage existed.