The Island of Jan Mayen was discovered in 1611; the channel which Baffin took for a bay, and which bears his name, was discovered in 1616. Behring discovered, in his first voyage in 1727, the strait which separates Siberia from America; he sailed through it in 1741, but his ship was stranded, and he himself died of scorbutic disease. In the year 1771 the Polar Sea was discovered by Hearne, a fur merchant; it was explored long after by Mackenzie. From the year 1810, when Sir John Ross, Franklin, and Parry turned their attention to the Arctic regions, these expeditions to the Polar Seas rapidly succeeded each other. In 1827 Parry reached the eighty-second degree of north latitude; and in 1845 Sir John Franklin, with the ships _Erebus_ and _Terror_, and their crews, departed on their last voyage, from which neither he nor his companions ever returned. There is now no doubt that they perished miserably, after having discovered the north-west passage, which Captain M'Clure also discovered, coming from the opposite direction, in 1850. In 1855 the expedition of Dr. Elisha Kane found the sea open from the Pole. * * * * * The Antarctic Pole had in the meantime attracted the attention of navigators. In 1772 the Dutch captain, Kerguelen, discovered an island which he took for a continent. In 1774 Captain Cook explored these regions up to the seventy-first degree of latitude. James Weddell, in a small whaler, sailed past this parallel in 1823. Biscoe discovered Enderby's Land in 1831. The _Zelée_ and _Astrolabe_, under the command of Captain Dumont D'Urville, of the French Marine, and the American expedition, under Captain Wilkes, reached the same region in 1838. The former discovered Adelia's Land. Finally, in 1841, Sir James Clark Ross, nephew of Sir John Ross, with the _Erebus_ and _Terror_, penetrated up to the seventy-eighth degree south latitude. Here he discovered the volcanic islands which he named after his ships, and, farther to the south, a new continent or land, which he called Victoria's Land.