The Saguenay flows into the Lower St. Lawrence
River. It is therefore not surprising that as soon as the French began
to settle in Lower Canada they heard of a vast northern inland sea of
salt water--Hudson's Bay. But the people who discovered and surveyed
Hudson's Bay during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
centuries were always on the search for a passage out of its waters
into the Arctic Sea, which would enable them to get right round
America into the Pacific Ocean.
In Arctic North America Nature really seems to have been preparing
during millions of years a grim joke with which to baffle exploring
humanity! It is easy enough to pass from Davis Straits into Hudson's
Bay, but to get out of Hudson's Bay in the direction of the Arctic
Ocean is like getting out of a very cleverly arranged maze. There are
innumerable false exits, which have disappointed one Arctic explorer
after another. When they had discovered that Hudson's Bay to the south
was only like a great bottle, and had no outlet, they explored its
northern waters; and when they found Chesterfield Inlet on the
north-west, which leads into Baker Lake, they thought perhaps here was
the passage through into the Arctic Sea. But no; that was no good. To
the north of Chesterfield Inlet was a broad channel called Roe's
Welcome, which led into Wager Bay and through frozen straits into
Fox's Channel, and this again into Ross Bay.
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