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 are little, and lesse than nothing, let me in silence admire thy greatnesse, that in this little heart of man (not able to serve a Kite for a break-fast) hast placed such greatness of spirit as the world is too little to fill.”

Thus in long-winded meed of praise writes Master Samuel Purchas.  Of those bold mariners of whom he speaks our worthy knight, Sir Martin, is one of the first and far from the least.

An effort had been made to discover a northwest passage to the Pacific as early as 1527, and another nine years later; but these were feeble attempts, which ended in failure and disaster, and discovered nothing worthy of record.  It was in 1576 that Frobisher, one of the most renowned navigators of his day, put into effect the project he had cherished from his youth upward, and for which he had sought aid during fifteen weary years, that of endeavoring to solve the ice-locked secret of the Arctic seas.