[Headnote: _ENGLISH N.W. DISCOVERIES._] A lull then took place, perhaps occasioned by the granting of a charter to certain noblemen and merchants in 1668, under the title of "Governor and Company of Adventurers of England," trading into Hudson's Bay, with the understanding that the discovery of a north-west passage was to be persevered in by them. During a century, they accomplished, by their servants, "Hearne and Mackenzie,"--the former in 1771, and the latter in 1789,--the tracing of the Copper-mine and the Mackenzie rivers to their embouchures into an arctic sea in the 70 deg. parallel of north latitude; whilst a temporary interest, on the part of Great Britain, during the reign of George the Third, occasioned two names, dear to every seaman's recollection, to be associated with the accomplishment of geographical discovery in the same direction: the one was Nelson, who served with Captain Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave, in his attempt to pass over the Pole; and the other, the greatest of English navigators--Cook, who, in 1776, failed to round the American continent by coming to the eastward from Behring's Straits. At the commencement of the current century, our knowledge of the northern coast of the American continent amounted to a mere fraction. On the west, Cook had hardly penetrated beyond Behring's Straits; and on the east, Hudson's and Baffin's Bay formed the limit of our geographical knowledge; except at two points, where the sea had been seen by Hearne and Mackenzie. Shortly after the Peace, one whose genius and ability were only to be equalled by his perseverance, the late Sir John Barrow, Secretary of the Admiralty, turned his attention to Arctic discovery, and especially the north-west passage. He had himself been to Spitzbergen, and as far north as the 80th parallel of latitude. Combating the prejudiced, convincing the doubtful, and teaching the ignorant, he awakened national pride and professional enterprise in a cause in which English seamen had already won high honours, and Great Britain's glory was especially involved. What difficulties he mastered, and how well he was seconded by others, and none more so than by the enlightened First Lord of the Admiralty, Viscount Melville, Sir John Barrow himself has told, in the able volumes which imperishably chronicle the deeds of ancient and modern explorers in Polar regions. Since 1818, with the exception of Sir John Ross's first voyage, we may have been said to have constantly added to our knowledge of the north-west.