An Historical, Topographical, and Descriptive View of the County Palatine of Durham, Vol. 2 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from An Historical, Topographical, and Descriptive View of the County Palatine of Durham, Vol. 2After exploring the Wager, it was discovered to have no other outlet but that by which they had entered and, on the 4th of August, the ships departed out of it. In Int. 65 deg. 38 min., long. 87 deg. 7 min. West, they entered another opening, lying north-west of Wager River, 13 leagues in width and, on the following day, they were in lat. 66 deg. 14 min., long. 86 deg. 28 min. West, at which place it had narrowed to eight or nine leagues. Though the tide came from the eastward, the appearance of a fair cape or headland, and the trending of the land, gave the greatest joy, all behaving that this cape would prove the north-east point of America; and Middleton therefore gave it the name of Cape Hope. The next day, when the fog had cleared away, they perceived the land to extend to westward of north, making a deep bay; and standing on towards the bottom of this bay, they saw plainly that they could not proceed above six or eight miles fur. Ther. On trying the set of the tide, they found it slack water, and concluded therefore that they must have overshot the opening to the eastward at which the tide entered. Here, as s Mr. Barrow, Middleton talks very unintelligibly of a frozen strait to the eastward of them. On the 8t he says, that, at ten in the morni he went on shore, taking with him the gunner, carpenter, and his clerk, to try if he could find from since the flood came into this strait or bay. He describes the entrance of the frozen strait, among the islands on the east side, as bearing east two leagues; he travelled, he says, about 15 miles, to the high est mountain that overlooked the strait and east bay on the other side, and saw the passage the flood came in at; the narrowest part, he says, of this strait is four or five leagues, and five, six, and seven in the broad est, almost full of large and small islands, and in length about 16 or 18 leagues; to the westward it was full of ice, not broken up, but fast in every part to the shoals and islands in the strait. Finding no hope in that direction, and the ice not being broken u it was resolved in council to try the other side of the 'welcome, from Cape Dobbs to Brook Cobham, toltnow if there was an opening there, and then return to England. They accordingly bore up on the 9th August, stood away to the southward, and on the i5th, after watering the ships at Brook Cobham, Middleton set sail for England.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.