9 



portant fact, rather than to amuse, I shall ven- 

 ture to pursue, without further apology, the 

 course I have pointed out, trusting myself to your 

 patience, and hoping that the monotony, which 

 it will be difficult to avoid in the treatment of 

 my subject, may, in some measure, be relieved 

 by the interest which many of you must take in 

 the persons whose names will be brought in 

 review before you. 



Doubting not that I might here apply the 

 observation " Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona 

 " multi," T shall commence my list with Captain 

 LUKEFOXE, commonly called "North-West Fox," 

 being the earliest of our native authors, whose 

 name has come to my knowledge. He was born 

 in the parish of St. Mary, and was baptized, as 

 the register shows, on the 20th October, 1586 : 

 his father, Richard Foxe, was an Assistant of the 

 Trinity-House at this port, and brought up his 

 son to the profession, which he had followed, of 

 a seafaring man. The revival of an attempt to 

 discover a North- West Passage, according to the 

 authority of Barrow,* is unquestionably to be 

 attributed to the son, who having petitioned the 

 King " for the lend of a ship for the voyage, and 

 " countenance to the action," set sail, under 

 royal patronage, towards the South Sea, in search 



* A Chronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Regions. By 

 John Barrow, F. R. S. Page 235. 



C 



