o far south as that you may touch the north part of Japan from
whence we would have you bring home one of the men of the country and
so, God blessing you, with all expedition to make your return home
again."

The _Discovery_ had proved a good little ship for exploration, so she
was again selected by Baffin for this new attempt in the far north.
Upon 26th March 1616 she sailed from Gravesend, arriving off the coast
of Greenland in the neighbourhood of Gilbert Sound about the middle
of May. Working against terrible winds, they plied to the northward,
the old ship making but slow progress, till at last they sighted
"Sanderson his Hope," the farthest point of Master Davis. Once more
English voices broke the silence of thirty years. The people who
appeared on the shore were wretchedly poor. They lived on seals' flesh,
which they ate raw, and clothed themselves in the skins. Still
northwards they sailed, cruising along the western coast. Though the
ice was beginning to disappear the weather kept bitterly cold, and
on Midsummer Day the sails and ropes were frozen too hard to be handled.
Stormy weather now forced them into a sound which they named Whale
Sound from the number of whales they discovered here. It was declared
by Baffin to be the "greatest and largest bay in these parts."

But beyond this they could not go; so they sailed across the end of
what we now know as Baffin's Bay and explored the opposite coast of
America, naming one of the greater openings Lancaster Sound, after
Sir James Lancaster of East India Company fame.

"Here," says Baffin pitifully, "our hope of Passage began to grow less
every day."

It was the old story of ice, advancing season, and hasty conclusions.

[Illustration: BAFFIN'S MAP OF HIS VOYAGES TO THE NORTH. From the
original MS., drawn by Baffin, in the British Museum.]

"There is no hope of Passage to the north of Davis' Straits," the
explorer further asserts; but he asserts wrongly, for Lancaster Sound
was to prove an open channel to the West.

So he returned home. He had not found the Passage, but he had discovered
the great northern sea that now bears his name. The size of it was
for long plunged in obscurity, and the wildest ideas centred round
the extent of this northern sea. A map of 1706 gives it an indefinite
amount of space, adding vaguely: "Some will have Baffin's Bay to run
as far as this faint Shadow," while a map of 1818 marks the bay, but
adds that "it is not now believed.