Hudson first sighted land beyond the Arctic Circle in lat. 70°. It was the cold, grim coast of East Greenland. Three degrees further north a chain of lofty peaks, all bare of snow, rose upon the horizon, and Hudson’s men noted that the temperature daily increased in mildness. Steering to the north-east, the great navigator arrived off the shores of Spitzbergen, where some of his men landed and picked up various fragments of whalebone, horns of deer, walrus-teeth, and relics of other animals. To the north-west point of Spitzbergen he gave the name which it still bears--Hakluyt’s Headland. At one time he found himself as far north as 81°; and it seems probable that he discovered the Seven Islands: he remarked that the sea was in some places green, in others blue; and he says, “Our green sea we found to be freest from ice, and our azure-blue sea to be our icy sea;” an observation not confirmed by later navigators. The greenness was probably due to the presence of minute organisms. [Illustration: SCENERY OF JAN MAYEN.] Having completed a survey of the west coast of Spitzbergen, he resolved on sailing round the north end of Greenland, which he supposed to be an island, and returning to England by Davis Strait. With this view he again examined the sea between Spitzbergen and Greenland, but from the strong ice-blink along the northern horizon felt convinced that there was no passage in that direction. After sighting Spitzbergen, therefore, he determined to return to England; and on his homeward voyage discovered an island in lat. 71° N., which he named Hudson Sutches, and which has since been improperly named Jan Mayen. The _Hopewell_ arrived in the Thames on the 15th of September. The results of this voyage, says Mr. Markham, were very important, both in a geographical and a commercial point of view. Hudson had discovered a portion of the east coast of Greenland; he had examined the edge of the ice between Greenland and Spitzbergen twice--in June and in the end of July; and he had sailed to the northward of Spitzbergen until he was stopped by the ice, reaching almost as high a latitude as Scoresby in 1806, which was 81° 12′ 42″ N. Hudson’s highest latitude by observation was 80° 23’, but he sailed for two more days in a north-easterly direction. The practical consequence of his voyage was that his account of the quantities of whales and sea-horses in the Spitzbergen seas led to the establishment of a rich and prosperous fishery, which continued to flourish for two centuries. In the following year Hudson made a second voyage, in the hope of discovering a north-eastern passage to China between Spitzbergen and Novaia Zemlaia. He exhibited his characteristic resolution, and forced his way to the very gate of the unknown region, which is still closed against human enterprise by an impenetrable barrier of ice; but all his efforts proved in vain, and he returned to Gravesend on the 26th of August.