FROBISHER AND THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE.


Hardly had it been learned that Columbus was mistaken in his
belief, and that the shores he had discovered were not those
of India and Cathay, when vigorous efforts began to find
some easy route to the rich lands of the Orient. Balboa, in
1513, crossed the continent at its narrow neck, and gazed,
with astounded eyes, upon the mighty ocean that lay
beyond,--the world's greatest sea. Magellan, in 1520, sailed
round the continent at its southern extremity, and turned
his daring prows into that world of waters of seemingly
illimitable width. But the route thus laid out was far too
long for the feeble commerce of that early day, and various
efforts were made to pass the line of the continent at some
northern point. The great rivers of North America, the
James, the Hudson, and others, were explored in the eager
hope that they might prove to be liquid canals between the
two great seas. But a more promising hope was that which
hinted that America might be circumnavigated at the north as
well as at the south, and the Pacific be reached by way of
the icy channel of the northern seas.

This hope, born so long ago, has but died out in our own
days. Much of the most thrilling literature of adventure of
the nineteenth century comes from the persistent efforts to