ssed the entrance of Hudson's
Straits and reached a point as far north as 72 deg. 41', a lofty granite
island, which he named Sanderson's Hope. He saw beyond him a great
sea, free, large, very salt, and blue, unobstructed by ice and of an
unsearchable depth, and believed that he had completely discovered the
eastern entrance of the North-West Passage.

[Illustration: ICEBERGS AND POLAR BEARS]

HENRY HUDSON, the great English navigator, who had made two voyages
(1607-8) for the English-Moscovy Company to discover a north-east
passage to India, past Siberia, commanded a third experiment in 1609
at the expense of the Dutch East India Company. He was to discover the
North-West Passage. For this purpose he entered the river now named
the Hudson, but soon found it was only a river; though he returned to
Holland with such an encouraging account of the surrounding country
that the Dutch a little later on, founded on the banks of the Hudson
River their colony of New Amsterdam (afterwards the State of New
York). In 1610 Hudson accepted a British commission to sail beyond
where Davis and Frobisher had passed, and once more seek for the
north-west passage to China. Instead he found the way into Hudson's
Bay. Here his men, alarmed at the idea of being lost in these regions
of ice and snow, mutinied against him, placed him and those who were
faithful to him in a boat, and cast them off, themselves returning to
England with the news of his discovery. Hudson was never heard of
again, and, strange to say, the mutineers apparently received no
punishment.

Between 1602 and 1668, English adventurers from London and Bristol,
notable amongst whom were WILLIAM BAFFIN, LUKE FOX, and CAPTAIN JAMES,
mapped the coasts of Hudson's Bay and Baffin's Bay and brought to the
notice of merchants in England the abundance of whales in these Arctic
waters, and of fur-bearing beasts and fur-trading Indians in the
region of Hudson's Bay.

This last point was most forcibly presented to Charles II and his
Government by a disappointed French Canadian, Pierre Esprit Radisson,
whose adventures will later on be described. Radisson, conceiving
himself to be badly treated by the French Governor of Canada, crossed
over to England with his brother-in-law, Chouart, and the two were
warmly taken up by Prince Rupert of Bavaria, the cousin of Charles II.
They were sent out by Prince Rupert in command of an expedition
financed by him and a number of London merchants,