"He Had Long Been Of Opinion, That Not Only Greenland,
But All The Land Seen By Baffin On The Northern
And eastern sides of the
great bay bearing his name, was composed of clusters of islands, and that a
passage
Through the _Fretum Davis_, round the northern extremity of
Cumberland Island, led directly to the North Sea, from the seventy to the
seventy-first degree of latitude." This opinion of Mr. Dalrymple was
grounded, in part at least, on the authority of an old globe, one of the
first constructed in Britain, preserved in the library of the Inner Temple:
this globe contains all the discoveries of our early navigators. Davis
refers to it; and Hackluyt, in his edition of 1589, describes it "as a very
large and most exact terrestrial globe, collected and reformed according to
the newest, secretest, and latest discoveries, both Spanish, Portugal, and
English, composed by Mr. Emmeric Molyneaux, of Lambeth, a rare gentleman in
his profession, being therein for diverse years greatly supported by the
purse and liberality of the worshipful merchant Mr. William Sanderson."
Mr. Dalrymple prevailed on the Hudson's Bay Company to send out Mr. Duncan,
a master in the navy, who had displayed considerable talent on a voyage to
Nootka Sound. This gentleman was very sanguine of success, and very zealous
in the cause in which he was employed. But this attempt also was
unsuccessful: Mr. Duncan, after a considerable lapse of time, reaching no
farther than Chesterfield Inlet.
The attention of scientific men, and of the public at large, was called
again to this important problem in the geography of the northern seas, by
some elaborate and well informed articles in the Quarterly Review, which
are generally supposed to be written by Mr. Barrow, the under secretary of
the Admiralty, who also published an abstract of voyages to the Northern
Ocean.
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Page 690 of 1007
Words from 188619 to 188928
of 273188
