SUMMARY OF RESULTS. 
47 
continents, but only the meeting of the Atlantic and the South Sea, in a vast and free 
space.” 1 In North America Drake reconnoitred a country, till then unexplored, on the 
western coast, from Cape Mendocino (in lat. 41^° N.) northwards to near lat. 48° N., 
not far from the Vancouver archipelago, now called the Oregon coast. 
The search after a north-east passage from Europe to Asia must have been suggested Search fob 
by the form given to the northern part of the Asiatic continent in Ptolemy’s map. XorhiV^-/' ° 
Sebastian Cabot was one of the promoters of Willoughby’s Expedition, which went Passages. 
in search of this passage in 1553. This expedition was a repetition of the periplus of 
Scandinavia formerly accomplished by Ohthere. One of the three vessels commanded 
by Chancellor reached the White Sea, and anchored in the harbour of Archangel, whence 
Chancellor proceeded to Moscow and concluded a commercial treaty with the Russians. 
In 1556 Stephen Burrough continued the discoveries of the preceding expedition, and 
reached the Strait of Kara, but proceeded no further. The attempts of the Dutch to 
pass around Asia by the north-east were not more successful. The fruitless expeditions 
of the Dutch have, however, left their trace on the history of navigation. To them we 
owe the discovery of the trvo largest islands in the boreal seas — Nova Zembla and 
Spitzbergen ; on reaching the northern extremity of Spitzbergen, in 1596, in latitude 
80° 11' N., Barents had penetrated further north than any former navigator. 
The idea of a north-west passage was revived twelve or fifteen years after Chancellor’s 
voyage, but we need not follow the endeavours made in that direction by Frobisher, 
John Davis and Hudson, between the years 1576 and 1610, although their vo} T ages 
furnished much information on the morphology of the northern seas. 
At the time of Magellan the only coasts of America known were those laved by the 
Atlantic ; of the western coasts only a very small part had as yet been seen, but on the 
coasts of Africa, Asia, and Oceania the work of discovery was continued and largely 
completed. The maps drawn in the last quarter of the sixteenth century show at a glance Charts of the 
the degree of knowledge arrived at regarding the New World. The general contour is as 
exact as could be expected from nautical surveys aided by the compass only, and based on 
determinations of latitude correct to within one-third of a degree, but without any 
astronomical longitudes. Two parts were still vague, viz., both extremities of the new 
continent. In the south the cartographers-connected the unexplored lands about the Strait 
of Magellan with the vague conception of an austral continent of vast extent, 2 and this 
idea was long held. The nautical knowledge of the north did not extend beyond the 
latitude of 41° N. on the north-west coast and 65° N. on the north-east. The voyages of 
Mendana, Queiros, and Torres added much to our knowledge of the Pacific Ocean. Many 
of the islands situated in the great Asiatic archipelago, as far as New Guinea, were 
1 Drake’s World Encompassed, Hakluyt Society, p. 87. 
2 See Dalrymple, An Historical Collection of Voyages in the South Pacific Ocean, London, 1770 ; Major, Early 
Voyages to Terra Australis ; Rainaud, Le Continent Austral, 1893. 
