THE SEARCH FOR THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE 243 



northwest passage. She sails in a few days, and is called the 'Argo/ 

 commanded by Mr. Swaine, who was in the last expedition in the 

 'California/ and author of a Journal of that voyage in two volumes. 

 We think the attempt laudable, whatever may be the success. If 

 she fails, 'magnis tamen excidit ausis.' With great esteem, 



"BENJ. FRANKLIN. 

 "MR. CADWALADER GOLDEN, N. Y." 



Of this voyage the Pennsylvania Gazette, "printed for Ben- 

 jamin Franklin, postmaster, and D. Hall/' November 15, 1753, 

 says: 



"Sunday last arrived here the schooner 'Argo/ Captain Charles 

 Swaine, who sailed from this port last spring, on the discovery of a 

 northwest passage. She fell in with ice off Cape Farewell ; left the 

 eastern ice and fell in with the western ice, in latitude 58 degrees, 

 and cruised to the northward to latitude 63 degrees, to clear it, but 

 could not; it then extending to the eastward. On her return to the 

 southward, she met with two Danish ships bound to Ball River and 

 Disco, up Davis Straits, who had been in the ice fourteen days off 

 Farewell, and had then stood to westward and assured the com- 

 mander that the ice was fast to the shore all above Hudson's Straits 

 to the distance of forty degrees out: and that there had not been 

 such a severe winter as the last these twenty-four years that they 

 had used that trade; they had been nine weeks from Copenhagen. 

 The 'Argo/ finding she could not get round the ice, pressed through 

 it and got into the strait's mouth the 26th of June, and made the 

 Island Resolution, but was forced out by vast quantities of driving 

 ice, and got into a clear sea the first of July. On the I4th, cruising 

 the ice for an opening to get in again, she met four sail of Hudson's 

 Bay ships endeavoring to get in, and continued with them till the 

 T9th, when they parted in thick weather, in latitude 62^2 degrees, 

 which weather continued until the 7th of August. The Hudson 

 Bay men supposed themselves 40 leagues from the western land. 



