6 



ed by Mr. J. B. Tyrrell, of the Geological Survey ; after which 

 the interesting paper of His Honor was read by him as fol- 

 lows : — 



A FORGOTTEN NORTHERN FORTRESS. 



The sixteenth century closed with that western waterway 

 to the Indies, which all men sought who went " down to the 

 sea " in the quaintly rigged, queerly built ships of the period, 

 undiscovered ; and the earlier years of the seventeenth found 

 the ardor of search unabated, and the goal the same. English 

 Kings and Queens, choosing more northern routes than had 

 the monarchs of Spain and Fiance, failed as they had ; Henry 

 the Eighth sent the Venetian Cabot, who found Labrador 

 barring the way ; Elizabeth sent Frobisher, who, turning its 

 northern flank, found only the ice-blocked strait which bears 

 his name. Davis and Wymouth followed ; but it was 

 reserved for the gallant Hudson to discover and sail into a 

 strait, apparently upon the direct route to the west, which 

 opening into a wide sea, that daring mariner must have 

 thought the secret of two centuries unlocked, and fancied 

 that through fog and mist he scented the spice-laden breezes 

 of Cathay. In 1610, mariners were not easily daunted by 

 wreck and ruined hopes ; and Hudson's tragic fate in the 

 o-reat sea he had discovered did not deter furthei' search, for, 

 in the years which followed, the frightened Esquimaux, flee- 

 ing in his kyack to relate to the old men of his band the 

 strange apparition which glinted white through the mist, and 

 was not the sheen of berg or floe, had biat seen the sails of 

 other adventurers who still sought what njen had been seek- 

 ing' for three generations in vain. 



Button and Bylot, Baffin, James and Fox, Hawkbridge and 

 Jones, all failed to find the desired jiassage : and when Captain 

 Zacharijih Gillam, accompanied by M. de Grosselier, sailed 

 into the bay in 1668, we may supjjose that the English 

 merchants who sent him had in view, as well as the North- 

 west Passage, those rich furs which,- brought back by other 

 voyagers, had begun to grace the shoulders of the beauties of 



