The voyages of Davis, in the years 1585-6 and 1587-8, of Hudson, in 1610, and of Baffin, in 1616, were the source of the greatest part of the discoveries which have been made in the countries situated to the northward and westward of the south point of Greenland. To these regions, consisting of what have been called bays and straits, the names of these celebrated voyagers have been applied. All the voyages, indeed, since undertaken for discovery in the same quarter, amounting to nearly thirty, have done little more than confirm the researches of these three individuals, and show how little there was to be found, instead of discovering anything of moment. The ostensible object of most of these voyages, was the discovery of a shorter passage to India than that by the Cape of Good Hope, by the north-west. The existence of such a passage is not yet either proved or refuted. In an account of “a Voyage to Hudson’s Bay,” by Henry Ellis, such a passage is inferred to exist from the following considerations:—the want of trees on the west side of Hudson’s Bay beyond a certain latitude; the appearance of a certain ridge of mountains lying near the same coast, and extending in a direction parallel to it; the direct testimony of the Indians, that they have seen the sea beyond the mountains, and have observed vessels navigating therein; and, most particularly, the nature and peculiarities observed in the tides. This latter argument is by far the most conclusive. From observations on the winds and tides in the Baltic, Mediterranean, and other inland seas, Ellis proceeds to show, that every circumstance with regard to the tides in Hudson’s Bay is different from what would take place in an inland sea, and then concludes that Hudson’s Bay is not such a sea, but has some opening which communicates with the Frozen Ocean on the north-west. Other arguments, which have been offered in favour of the separation of Greenland from America, are deduced from the existence of a current setting from the north—from the circumstance of icebergs and drift-wood being brought down by the current—from whales wounded in the Spitzbergen seas having been caught in Davis’s Strait—from the position of the land, as represented on skins by the native American Indians—and from the occurrence of certain plants in Greenland, which are natives of Europe, but have never been found in any part of the American continent.