ioo Arctic and Antarctic Exploration [part i 
Burrough, whose Discourse of the Compass and Magnetic 
Needle appeared in 1581, followed in 1585 by Robert 
Norman's New Attractive. 
While engaged in these observations, Davis found the 
progress of the little Ellen suddenly checked by broad 
floes stretching across her path. This was the famous 
"middle pack" drifting towards the Atlantic, sometimes 
extending for 200 miles, with an average thickness of 
eight feet. A lane of water was followed for some distance 
but it proved deceptive, and the Ellen was lucky in 
being able to escape from it without being beset. Davis 
then coasted along the southern edge of the pack and 
succeeded in reaching the western side of the Strait. 
By midnight of the 19th July the Ellen was off the 
entrance of Cumberland Gulf. Sailing along the coast 
they sighted Frobisher Strait and " Meta Incognita" 
without knowing that they were Frobisher's discoveries, 
for the map-makers had placed them on the other side, 
in Greenland. The Ellen also crossed the entrance of 
the great strait which Frobisher had discovered, and 
Davis named the point on the south side Cape Chidley, 
after an old friend in Devonshire. The confused current 
which Frobisher likened to the waterfall then existent at 
London Bridge, appears to have been called by Davis 
"the furious overfall" as shown on the Molyneux globe 
and the "new map" of 1599. Davis in his log and Janes 
in his narrative describe it as "a mighty overfall, with 
divers circular motions like whirlpools in such sort as 
forcible streams pass through the arches of bridges." 
The rendezvous of the fishing vessels was in 54 0 N. on the 
coast of Labrador, where the Ellen waited until the 15 th 
iVugust, and then shaped a course for England, arriving 
at Dartmouth on the 15th September, 1587. The logs 
of the Sunrise and Elizabeth have not been preserved, 
but we may hope that their cargoes remunerated Master 
Sanderson and the other subscribers, and paid the ex- 
penses of the expedition 1 . 
1 The narratives of the first and third voyages were written by 
Mr Janes, those of the second by Davis himself. They are all in Hakluyt, 
and, with the other writings of Davis, have been edited for the Hakluyt 
Society by Admiral Sir Albert Markham. The present writer's life of Davis, 
which records his great services in much more detail than is here possible, 
was published in 1889. 
