INTRODUCTION. 



No voyage, however, appears to have been undertaken 

 to explore the clrcumpolar feas, till the year 1607, when 

 " Henry Hudfon was fet forth, at the charge of certain 

 " worfhipful merchants of London, to difcover a paflage 

 " by the North Pole to Japan and China." He failed 

 from Gravefend on the firft of May, in a fhip called the 

 Hopewell, having with him ten men and a boy. I have 

 taken great pains to find his original journal, as well as 

 thofe of fome others of the adventurers who followed him ; 

 but without fuccefs ; the only account I have feen is an 

 imperfedl abridgement in Purchas, by which it is not pof- 

 fible to lay down his track ; from which, however, I 

 have drawn the following particulars : — He fell in with 

 the land to the Welhvard in latitude 73", on the 

 twenty-firft of June, which he named Hold-with-Hope. 

 The twenty-feventh, he fell in with Spitfbergen, and 

 met with much ice ; he got to eighty degrees twenty- 

 three minutes, which was the NorthernmoU: latitude 

 he obferved in. Giving an account of the conclufion 

 of his difcoveries, he fays, " On the fixteenth of 

 *' Augufl: I faw land, by reafon of the clearnefs of the 

 *' weather, JI retching far into eighty -two degrees^ and, by 

 " the bowing and fhewing of the fl^y, much farther j 

 " which when I firft faw, I hoped to have had a free fea 

 " between the land and the ice, and meant to have com- 

 *' pafied this land by the North; but now finding it was 

 *' impoirible, by means of the abundance of ice com- 

 " palling us about by the North, and joining to the 



«' lands 



