40 ARCTIC VOYAGES. Chap. II. 



have been penned from want of knowledge of the 

 subject: — " In re-discovering Baffin's Bay, I have 

 derived great additional pleasure from the reflection 

 that I have placed in a fair light before the public 

 the merits of a worthy and able navigator, whose 

 fate, like that of many others, it has not only been 

 to have lost, by a combination of untoward circum- 

 stances, the opportunity of acquiring during his 

 lifetime the fame he deserved ; but could he have 

 lived to this period, to have seen his discoveries 

 expunged from the records of geography, and the 

 bay, with which his name is so fairly associated, 

 treated as a phantom of the imagination." 



Every person at all acquainted with voyages of 

 discovery knows that Baffin was not only a skilful 

 navigator, but so well versed in nautical astronomy 

 as to be able to deduce the longitude from lunar 

 observations. Whether, as pilot only to Robert 

 Bylot, this last voyage was not exactly to his mind, 

 and was therefore more vaguely and unsatisfactorily 

 recorded than any of his others, his account of 

 it is undoubtedly unlike the preceding narratives 

 of his voyages. Baffin is so much aware of this 

 that, in his letter to Mr. John Wolstenholme, he 

 observes, " Some may object and aske why we sought 

 that coast no better ?" to which he alleges in 

 answer, the badness of the weather, the loss of 

 anchors, the weakness of the crew, and the ad- 

 vanced season of the year. But as to the expung- 



