1615. A MIXED CHARACTER. 229 



gator, " I suppose the refraction is more or lesse, 

 according as the ayre is thicke or clear, which I 

 leave for better schollers to discusse." 



On the 6th September, all the ships arrived 

 safe in the Thames, with a good store of oil and 

 bone. 



The last successful voyage induced the company 

 to send out in 16 14, ten ships and two pinnaces, 

 besides the Thomaslne^ intended for discoveries, 

 under the orders of Robert Fotherby. Baffin 

 was likewise on this voyage, but the relation of 

 it is given by Fotherby, and contains nothing 

 deserving of particular notice. Being much 

 hampered with ice, the ship intended for dis^ 

 covery got very little beyond the north-eastern 

 extremity of Spitzbergen. Baffin was again, in 

 1615, sent on northern discovery in the pinnace 

 called the Richard^ of twentie tons, but got no 

 farther north than Hakluyt's Headland; he men- 

 tions however his having marked down on a map, 

 " how farre the state of this sea is discovered 

 betwixt eighty and seventy-one degrees of lati- 

 tude ; and with regard to the probability of a 

 passage by the pole," he says, " for as much as it 

 appears not yet to the contrarie but that there is 

 a spacious sea betwixt Greenland, and King James 

 his New Land, (Spitzbergen) although much 

 pestered with ice : I will not seem to dissuade 

 this worshipfull companie from the yeerly adven- 

 turing of £\50 or e£'200 at the most, till som^ 



Q 3 



