38 TRANSACTIONS iSqQ-'oO 



The mount was, of course, named in honour of Sir Walter 

 Raleigh who would have been with the expedition but the Queen 

 would not let him go, being unwilling to deprive her court and 

 herself of his handsome presence and his beautiful legs. 



Totness Road was named after Totness near Dartmouth, 

 probably because their ships had been fitted out there. Exeter 

 Sound commemorated the chief town of their loved Devonshire. 

 Cape Walsingham received its name in honour of Sir Francis 

 Walsingham, one of Queen Elizabeth's famous statesmen, a 

 diplomat often at his wit's end through Queen Elizabeth's ex- 

 traordinary vacillations, yet serving her and his dearly loved 

 England with great energy and wisdom and with a stout in- 

 dependent English heart. He had endeared himself to Davis be- 

 cause of the help he had given to Sir Henry Hakluj'^t and other 

 navigators in their voj^ages of discover3^ 



Cape Dyer was named after a personal friend. Sir Edward 

 Dyer, Chancellor of the Order of the Garter. 



On the 14th August, Janes writes, " we came to the most 

 southerly cape of this land which we named Cape of God's 

 Mercy as being the place of our first entrance from the dis- 

 covery ' ' ; meaning that having explored the strait now called 

 Davis Strait and from a point within the Arctic Circle having 

 gone south homeward bound they desired in this wa}^ to express 

 their gratitude to God for their preservation. Those old-style 

 sailors were God-praising men, in their own way. 



The coast line they had explored was named Cumberland 

 and the sound of which Cape of God's Mercy is the northern 

 headland they named Cumberland Sound, after another friend of 

 Davis, George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland. 



From Cape of God's Mercy they returned to England and 

 were able to report that they had sailed round the southern point 

 of Greenland, had gone north along the west coast of Greenland 

 to Gilbert Sound which Davis so named in remembrance of his 

 old plaj'mate, the hapless Sir Humphrey, who had p2 ished in the 

 foundering of his little 10 ton vessel, the Squirrel, off the coast of 

 Nova Scotia encouraging his men by calling out ' ' we are as near 

 heaven by sea as by land ' ' ; had crossed the strait now called 

 Davis Strait and had reached the western shores of the continent 

 on the 6th August, at Cape Walsingham, and had explored the 



