1742. CHRISTOPHER MIDDLETOIs^ 285 



Wager River thirteen leagues in width, and on the 

 following day they were in latitude 66° 14', longi- 

 tude 86° 28' W., at which place it had narrowed 

 to eight or nine leagues. Though the tide came 

 from the eastward, the appearance of a fair cape 

 or headland and the trending of the land gave the 

 greatest joy, all believing that this cape would 

 prove the north-east point of America, and 

 Middleton therefore gave it the name of Cape Hope. 

 The next day, when the fog had cleared away, 

 they perceived the land to extend to westward of 

 north, making a deep bay; and standing on to- 

 wards the bottom of this bay, they saw plainly 

 that they could not proceed above six or eight 

 miles farther. On trying the set of the tide they 

 found it slack water, and concluded therefore that 

 they must have overshot the opening to the east- 

 ward at which the tide entered. Here Middleton 

 talks very unintelligibly of a frozen strait to the 

 eastward of them. On the 8th, he says, that, 

 at ten in the morning, he went on shore, taking 

 with him the gunner, carpenter, and his clerk, to 

 try if he could find from whence the flood came 

 into this strait or bay. He describes the entrance 

 of the frozen strait, among the islands on the east 

 side, as bearing east two leagues ; he travelled, he 

 says, about fifteen miles, to the highest mountain 

 that overlooked the strait and east bay on the 

 other side, and saw the passage the flood came in 

 at ; the narrowest part, he says, of this strait is 



