The adventures of the early explorers most often took the form of seeking a new and shorter passage from one ocean to another, and so many straits bear the names of the explorers. The Elizabethan explorer, Martin Frobisher, sought for a "North-west Passage" from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and for a time it was thought that he had found it in the very north of North America. But it was afterwards found that the "passage," which had already been given the name of _Frobisher's Straits_, was really only an inlet, and afterwards it became known as _Lumley's Inlet_.
Frobisher never discovered a North-west Passage, for the ships of those days were not fitted out in a way to enable the sailors to bear the icy cold of these northern regions. Many brave explorers tried later to discover it. Three times John Davis made a voyage for this purpose but never succeeded, though _Davis Strait_ commemorates his heroic attempts. Hudson and Baffin explored in these waters, as the names _Hudson Bay_ and _Baffin Bay_ remind us.
It was nearly two hundred years later that Sir John Franklin sailed with an expedition in two boats, the _Erebus_ and _Terror_, determined to find the passage. He found it, but died in the attempt; but, strangely enough, his name was not given to any strait, though later it was given to all the islands of the Arctic Archipelago.
The winning of India by the British in the eighteenth century did not give us many new English names. India was not, like the greater part of America, a wild country inhabited by savage peoples. It had an older civilization than the greater part of Europe, and the only reason that it was weak enough to be conquered was that the many races who lived there could not agree among themselves. Most of the place-names of India are native names given by natives, for centuries before France and England began to struggle for its possession in the eighteenth century India had passed through a long and varied history.
When we remember that the natives of India have no name to describe the whole continent, it helps us to understand that India is in no way a single country. The British Government have given the continent the name _India_, taking it from the great river Indus, which itself takes its name from an old word, _sindhu_, meaning "river."