Excerpt from The Northern Coasts of America, and the Hudson's Bay Territories A former volume has been devoted to the description of the daring efforts which have been made to explore the Polar Seas; and we now proceed to direct our attention to another, and a no less interesting and important chapter in the history of human enterprise - the discovery of North America, and the progress of maritime adventure on the more northern coasts of this vast continent. Without de tracting in any degree from the fame of Columbus, it may be mentioned as a remarkable circumstance, that although the admiral landed in Hispaniola as early as the 4th of February 1493, he did not ascertain the existence of the continent of South America till the 30th of May 1498; whilst there is certain evidence that, almost a year before, an English vessel had reached the shores of North Ame rica. As much obscurity hangs over the circumstances of this early voyage, and as I have arrived at a conclusion completely at vari ance with that adopted by a late acute writer, it will be necessary to dwell with some minuteness on the history of this great event. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This 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.