l899-'00 TRANSACTIONS 31 



after the staunch little vessel that had carried him thus far in 

 safety. 



This is the first place-name given in the high latitudes of 

 North Canada that has remained. 



Cabot called the strait Rio Nevado* — the river of snow — 

 and Cortereal named it the Anian Straitf believing it, from its 

 outrushing water, to be the eastern or lower end of the passage 

 through which a vessel might go to Cathay. But the Cabot 

 name never fastened itself, and the Cortereal name so confused 

 the geographers that by 1556 it was applied to the north and 

 south passage between Asia and this continent to continue so 

 applied till it, too, found a place in the ash-heap of lapsed and 

 and discarded names, Behring's name being properly substituted, 

 though not before many a navigator had vainly hunted high and 

 low for the Anian Strait on both sides of this continent. 



On this voyage Frobisher named Prior's Sound, Thomas 

 William's Island and the Five Men's Sound, in which latter body 

 of water was one Island he named Trumpet Isle, and a second he 

 called Butcher's Island. 



He landed on the last named on the 19th August, and on 

 going to the top of it to see if there were any people or no, he 

 says "he had sight of seven boates which came rowing from the 

 east side. ' ' With the occupants of these he made acquaintance 

 and gave them "thridden points" (sewing needles). 



This was the first acquaintance of Englishmen with our 

 fellow subjects the Eskimos, and of the Eskimos with the pre- 

 decessor of the modern needle which plays or plies so important a 

 part in domestic economy that like the telephone we don't know 

 how the world got along without it. Frobisher describe.^ the na- 

 tives : " They be like the Tartars, with long black haire, broad 

 faces, and flat noses, and tawnie in colour, wearing sealskins as 



*Cortereal is supposed by some to have named the straits (Hudson) Rio 

 Nevado, and Dr. Richardson says the name Nevada has been transferred to 

 some mountainous islands on the north side tliat even in summer are covered 

 with snow. I have followed Asher ("Henry Hudson, the Navigator, " 

 pag-e 257.) 



tThere has been much discussion about tlie derivation of this word. The 

 most generally accepted idea is that mentioned above. It has often occurred 

 to me that Cortereal possibly named the strait Anian, not because of its sup- 

 posed end of a passage through the continent, but because of the great 

 number of eider and other duck he found there; that bird being ornithologi- 

 cally a member of the anas family— -anas molussima. 



