20 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



a French ship in that port well furnished with victual, and 

 such was the policy of the English that they became masters 

 of the same ', changed ships, and sailed home.* 

 (i) Eng- Voyages with a more definite purpose were undertaken by 

 ^fer^AsTJ ^'"^ Martin Frobisher (1576-8), John Davys (1585-7), 

 were the George Weymouth (1601), John Knight (1606), Henry 

 ZelLswho Hudson (1610-11), Thomas Button (1612), William Baffin 

 afterwards and Robert Bylot (16 15-16), Luke Fox (1631), and Thomas 

 mere ex-^ James (1631-2), in order to find a north-west passage to 

 plorers; Cathay, and to bring back the gold and silver and other 

 trophies of the storied East. Frobisher, the first of the north- 

 westers, owed his inspiration to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who 

 presented a petition to the Queen to promote a voyage to 

 Cathay by the north-west (1567),'^ and wrote 'A Discourse 

 to prove a passage by the north-west to Cathaia and the 

 East Indies' (1574),' which was the first book which 

 advocated the Enghsh colonization of North America. 

 Frobisher made three voyages to Frobisher Bay, on the 

 north of Hudson Strait (1576, '7, '8), in which he deemed the 

 Bay a Strait, with Asia on his right hand and America on 

 his left hand. He took possession with feudal solemnities, 

 said he was within a few days' journey of Cathay, built 

 a house of stone and lime (which was still there in 1862), 

 and but for an accident to his stores would have left behind 

 one hundred persons, mostly soldiers and gentlemen, in 

 order to spend the winter there (1578-9) or wait until he re- 

 turned. As with Hore, his gentlemen and soldiers were 

 usually one-third of his company ; and as with his successors, 

 a winter party of one hundred men was to form a bridge 

 between discovery and colonization. Five years later 

 Christopher Carleill proposed,'' and seven years later 

 Virginian colonization began with a similar winter party of 



1 Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, vol. viii, p. 3. 



2 State Papers^ Domestic Series, Elizabeth : Jan. 34, and Feb. (?), 

 1567. * Printed 1576. 



* Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, vol. viii, p. 148. 



