This was the departure of the
Acadians so touchingly described by Longfellow.
The British had become tenacious of their rights over the east coast
of Newfoundland, because from the middle of the seventeenth century
onwards they were becoming increasingly interested in the whale
fisheries and the fur trade of the lands bordering on Hudson's Bay,
and would not tolerate any blocking of the sea route thither by the
French.
In the explorations of Arctic America, Frobisher's expeditions had
been succeeded by those of JOHN DAVIS, who in the course of three
voyages, beginning in June, 1585, passed the entrance of Hudson's
Straits and reached a point as far north as 72 deg. 41', a lofty granite
island, which he named Sanderson's Hope. He saw beyond him a great
sea, free, large, very salt, and blue, unobstructed by ice and of an
unsearchable depth, and believed that he had completely discovered the
eastern entrance of the North-West Passage.
[Illustration: ICEBERGS AND POLAR BEARS]
HENRY HUDSON, the great English navigator, who had made two voyages
(1607-8) for the English-Moscovy Company to discover a north-east
passage to India, past Siberia, commanded a third experiment in 1609
at the expense of the Dutch East India Company. He was to discover the
North-West Passage. For this purpose he entered the river now named
the Hudson, but soon found it was only a river; though he returned to
Holland with such an encouraging account of the surrounding country
that the Dutch a little later on, founded on the banks of the Hudson
River their colony of New Amsterdam (afterwards the State of New
York).
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