During this same year, the English made their last attempt for nearly two centuries in the Arctic waters of America. William Baffin, who had accompanied Hudson in one of his earlier voyages, embarked in the capacity of pilot on board the Discovery,--a vessel bound for the northwest and commanded by one Robert Bylot. The crew consisted of fourteen men and two boys. Passing through Davis' Strait, they came to the vast bay which now bears Baffin's name. They found it to be eight hundred miles long and three hundred wide. They ascended to the north as far as the seventy-eighth degree of latitude, where the bay seemed to taper off in a strait or sound, which they called Thomas Smith's Sound. Here Baffin observed the greatest variation of the needle known at that time,--fifty-six degrees to the west. The charts of Baffin are lost; but several of his journals are extant, and contain numerous astronomical and hydrographic observations, which have since been fully verified by the superior instruments of modern science. 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 continent 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 northwest. [Illustration: ARCTIC GULL IN PURSUIT.] Section V. FROM THE DISCOVERY OF CAPE HORN TO THE APPLICATION OF STEAM TO NAVIGATION; 1616-1807. CHAPTER XXXV. A FAMOUS VESSEL--THE MAYFLOWER--HER APPEARANCE--THE SPEEDWELL--DEPARTURE OF THE TWO SHIPS--ALLEGED UNSEAWORTHINESS OF THE SPEEDWELL--THE MAYFLOWER SAILS ALONE--THE EQUINOCTIAL--CONSULTATIONS--A REMEDY APPLIED--FIRST VIEW OF THE LAND--SUBSEQUENT HISTORY AND FATE OF THE MAYFLOWER. We have now to narrate the incidents of a voyage without precedent, in one point of view, in maritime annals, and to chronicle the adventures of a ship which may be safely said to have achieved a fame beyond that of any other that ever ploughed the ocean. When we mention the name of the Mayflower, in which the Pilgrim Fathers proceeded from Southampton Water to Plymouth Rock, we are sure that the distinction which we claim for this feeble vessel will be contested by none,--not even by those who would gladly accord the supremacy of the seas to the Nina of Columbus or the Vittoria of Magellan. The details of the voyage are few and unsatisfactory; but the vivid imagination of historians and orators has amply supplied their place. [Illustration: SPEEDWELL AND MAYFLOWER.]