THE DISCOVERY OF BAFFIN'S BAY. 



359 



flailed for Java, and cast anchor in the harbor of Jacatra — now 

 Batavia — sixteen months after quitting the Texel, having lost 

 but three men upon the voyage. The expedition properly ter- 

 minates here ; for Jan Petersen Coen, President for the Dutch 

 East India Company at Bantam, in Java, confiscated their ship 

 and cargo as forfeited for illegally sailing within the boundaries 

 of the Company's charter. He sent Schouten and Lemaire to 

 Holland, however, that they might plead their cause before a 

 competent court. Lemaire died on his way home, overcome with 

 grief and vexation at the disastrous end of a voyage which had 

 been so successful till the seizure of the ship. Schouten. made 

 several subsequent voyages to the East Indies, and died, in 1625, 

 in the island of Madagascar. His name is little known, and his 

 memory has almost passed away, although to him clearly belongs 

 the credit of improving upon Magellan's discovery by furnish- 

 ing a safer route to the commerce of the world and substituting 

 the doubling of Cape Horn for the threading of the Strait. 



During this same year, the English made their last attempt 

 for nearly two centuries in the Arctic waters of America. 

 William Baffin, who had accompanied Hudson in one of his 

 earlier voyages, embarked in the capacity of pilot on board 

 the Discovery, — a vessel bound for the northwest and com- 

 manded by one Robert Bylot. The crew consisted of fourteen 

 men and two boys. Passing through Davis' Strait, they came 

 to the vast bay which now bears Baffin's name. They found it 

 to be eight hundred miles long and three hundred wide. They 

 ascended to the north as far as the seventy-eighth degree of 

 latitude, where the bay seemed to taper off in a strait or sound, 

 which they called Thomas Smith's Sound. Here Baffin observed 

 the greatest variation of the needle known at that time, — fifty- 

 six degrees to the west. The charts of Baffin are lost; but 

 several of his journals are extant, and contain numerous astro- 

 nomical and hydrographic observations, which have since been 

 fully verified by the superior instruments of modern science. 



