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the year 1513, when Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean at Panama, the navigators of Spain, and of every rival naval power which arose for the following two hundred and seventy-nine years, were searching for some strait, or river, which would furnish water communication between the two great oceans that border the American continent. The Strait of Magellan, discovered soon after the Pacific, afforded a way by which vessels could enter this ocean from the western side of the Atlantic; but it was far to the south, crooked and dangerous. After the discovery by the English buccaneer, Drake, of the passage around Cape Horn, the search was continued with redoubled interest. Not only the Spanish and Portuguese entered into it, but the English, who had found the great inland sea of Hudson's Bay penetrating the continent towards the west, endeavored, by offering prizes, to stimulate the zeal of navigators in looking for the Northwest Passage.

A rumor continued to circulate through the world, vague, mystical, and romantic, of half discoveries by one and another power; and tales, wilder than anything but pure fiction, were soberly listened to by crowned heads,—all of which went to confirm the belief in the hoped-for straits, which one pretender to discovery even went so far as to name, and give latitude and longitude. The Straits of Anian he called them; and so, all the world was looking for Fretum Anian. 11