2lG DISCOVERIES OF 



1616. 



mg and important either before or since, is the 

 most vague, indefinite, and unsatisfactory of all 

 others, and the account of it most unlike the 

 writing of William Baffin. In all his other 

 journals, we have not only the latitude and longi- 

 tude noted down, but the observations of the 

 heavenly bodies from which they were deduced, 

 and the arithmetical operation inserted ; the lon- 

 o'itude, the variation and declination of the mag- 

 netic needle, the courses steered, and a variety of 

 particulars entered on the proper day ; but in this 

 most important voyage, purporting to have reached 

 many degrees of latitude beyond any preceding 

 voyage, and to have skirted the coast and islands of 

 Am.erica, where the passage must have been found, 

 if it has any existence, we have neither course, 

 nor distance, nor variation of the compass, except 

 once, and no one longitude whatever ; so vague and 

 indefinite indeed is every information left, which 

 could be useful, that each succeeding geographer 

 has drawn " Baffin's Bav" on his chart as best 

 accorded with his fancy. It would almost seem 

 as if Baffin was averse from discovery on this 

 voyage ; for v/hen they had reached only the lati- 

 tude 70° 20', beyond which even Davis had been, he 

 conceived "some dislike of tlie passage;" and the 

 slovenly manner in which he runs over the nume- 

 rous " sounds," in a very high degree of latitude, 

 is quite vexatious ; indeed, from the multitude of 

 ^s'hales, which he describes to chokje up those 



