138 On the North-iVest Passage- 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
Arr. X]X.—On the North-West Passage. By Isaac Lea. 
Pernars no geographical problem since the discovery of 
America, has excited a more general sensation than the pos- 
sibility of discovering a passage round the northern part of 
this continent. Adeep interest was at a very early period 
felt by those concerned in the commerce of the Indies, and 
expeditions were fitted out with strong hope of opening a 
way that would prove more direct, and shorien the voyage 
to those countries at least one third of the time it took to 
double the Cape of Good Hope. 
Robert Thorne, a merchant of Bristol, in 1527, first sug- 
gested the practicability of this passage, and two ships were 
sent out by Henry VIIf. One only of those ships returned, 
but with what success we are not informed. 
Since that period, nearly one hundred expeditions have 
been fitted out by different nations to obtain the desirable 
object, few of which met with even partial success. Among 
the most important are those of Hudson in 1607, Baffin in 
1614, and Parry in 1819. The idea of a passage had during 
this period scarcely ever been abandoned. The interrup- 
tion by the ice alone restrained most of those enterprising 
voyagers from pushing their barks into the waves of the Pa- 
cific Ocean. ‘That the water of this ocean flows through 
Behring’s straits and the Polar sea into the Atlantic, there 
cannot now be a doubt. 
The constant current, according to Cooke, Burney, and 
Kotesbue, which flows from the Pacific through Behring’s 
straits, must carry a vast body of water towards the North 
Pole. The undeviating direction of the currentin Baffin’s 
bay and Davis’s straits, to the S. E. carries off this flow of 
water into the Atlantic. Large quantities of drift wood are 
thrown on the southern shores of the Aleutian islands, 
which stretch from the western coast of America to Asia, 
about the parallel of 53° N. lat. The same current carries 
