1668. ZACCHARIAH GILLAM. ^i59 



diately engaged to go out in one of his Majesty's 

 ships, which was taken up. for the voyage, not 

 merely to form a settlement, but also to prosecute 

 the oft attempted passage to China, by the north- 

 west. In a letter from Mr. Oldenburgh, the first 

 secretary to the Royal Society, addressed to the 

 celebrated Mr. Boyle, he says, " surely I need not 

 tell you from hence what is said here w^ith great 

 joy of the discovery of a north-west passage made 

 by two English and one Frenchman, lately repre- 

 sented by them to his Majesty at Oxford, and 

 answered by the Royal grant of a vessel to sail 

 into Hudson's Bay, and thence into the South Sea ; 

 these men affirming, as I heard, that wdth a boat 

 they went out of a lake in Canada, into a river, 

 which discharp-ed itself north-west into the south 

 sea, into which they wxnt and returned north-east 

 into Hudson's Bay." 



Captain Zacchartah Gillam was appointed to 

 carry out the Frenchman to Hudson's Bay, and to 

 make discoveries to the northward. He sailed in the 

 summer of 1668, and is said to have proceeded as 

 far north up Davis's Strait as 7\*3°, but nothing 

 appears on record to justify such an assertion. On 

 his return into Hudson's Bay, he entered Rupert's 

 River on the 29th September, and prepared to pass 

 the winter there. The river was not frozen over 

 before the 9th December; and though considerably 

 to the northward of Charlton Island, where James 

 wintered, no complaint is made by Gillam of the 



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