360 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



Baffin saw the opening to the west which Ross, two centuries 

 later, was to call Lancaster Sound, and through which Parry 

 was to penetrate to Melville Island and to the Polar Sea. He 

 was convinced that a northwest passage existed, though he 

 never made a second voyage in search of it. For one hundred 

 and sixty years, now, the Arctic waters of the American con- 

 tinent were left undisturbed by adventurers from Europe. Their 

 icy coasts remained unvisited till the middle of the eighteenth 

 century, when the energies of English navigators were roused 

 into activity by the reward offered by Parliament, — twenty 

 thousand pounds to him who should sail to China by the north- 

 west. 



ARCTIC GULL IN PURSUIT. 



