Two years after Hudson sailed on his last voyage, a new expedition was sent to the northwest under the command of Sir Thomas Button. It consisted of two ships, the “Resolution” and the “Discovery,” and was provisioned for eighteen months. “Concerning this voyage,” says Luke Fox, “there cannot bee much expected from me, seing that I have met with none of the Journalls thereof. It appeareth that they have been concealed, for what reasons I know not.”[199] Button sailed from England in the beginning of May, and entering Hudson’s Strait, crossed the Bay to the southern point of Southampton Island, which he named Carey’s Swan’s Nest. He then kept on toward the western side of the Bay, to which he gave the significant name “Hope’s Check,” and coasting along the shore he discovered the important river which he called Port Nelson, and which is now known as Nelson’s River. Here he wintered, “and kept three fires all the Winter, but lost many men, and yet was supplied with great store of white Partridges and other Fowle,” says Fox.[200] On the breaking up of the ice he made a thorough exploration of the bay and of Southampton Island, and finally returned to England in the autumn, having accomplished enough to give him a foremost rank among Arctic navigators. A little less than a year and a half after Button’s return, Robert Bylot and William Baffin embarked on the first of the two voyages commonly associated with their names. [Illustration] They sailed from the Scilly Islands on Good Friday, April 7, 1615, in the “Discovery,” a ship of about fifty-five tons, in which Bylot had already made three voyages to the northwest. Following a course already familiar to him, they passed through Hudson’s Strait, and ascended what is now known as Fox Channel. Here and at the western end of Hudson’s Strait they spent about three weeks, and then sailed for home, where they arrived in the early part of September. [Illustration: SIR THOMAS SMITH. Passe’s engraving is very rare. It is also reproduced by Markham, in whose Introduction are accounts of Smith, Sir Dudley Digges, Sir John Wolstenholme, and other eminent patrons of Arctic exploration in that day. See Belknap’s _American Biography_, ii. 9.] Their next voyage was one of far greater interest and importance, and ranks among the most famous of the Arctic voyages. They sailed again in the “Discovery,” leaving Gravesend on the 26th of March, 1616, with a company numbering in all seventeen persons; and coasting along the western shore of Greenland and through Davis Strait, they visited and explored both shores of the great sea which has ever since borne the name of Baffin’s Bay. Here they discovered and named the important channels known as Lancaster Sound and Jones Sound, beside numerous smaller bodies of water and numerous islands since become familiar to Arctic voyagers. All this was accomplished in a short season, and on the 30th of August they cast anchor at Dover on their return.