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The Countries of the World: Barrow

I., in whose reign it was completely explored. Quite a number of straits, gulfs, and bays bear the names of their respective navigators; therefore these need not detain us here. An exception exists in the case of Barrow's Strait, which was so called by Captain Penny in compliment to John Barrow, the son of Sir John Barrow the traveller and statesman, in 1850. All Saints' Bay was discovered by Vespucci on the Feast of All Saints in the year 1503. The Gulf of St. Lawrence was first explored, and the navigation of the long river of the same name commenced, on the Feast of St. Lawrence, 1500. The Gulf of Carpentaria preserves the memory of a Dutch captain named Carpenter who discovered it in 1606. Torres Strait owes its designation to its position near the Equator, the word torres, from the Latin toridus, signifying parched. Botany Bay was so called by Captain Cook from the great variety of plants which he found growing on its shores when exploring it in the year 1770. The St. George's Channel was named after the patron saint of England. The Skagerrack denotes the "crooked strait between the Skagen” (so called from the Gothic skaga, a promontory), which forms the northern extremity of Jutland and Norway. Zuyder Zee expresses the Dutch for the "south sea," in relation to the North Sea or German Ocean. The Bay of Biscay takes its name from the Basque or Basquan, i.e., mountainous provinces, whose shores are washed by its waters. The Strait of Gibraltar honours the reputation of Ben Zeyad Tarik, a Moorish general who effected the invasion of Spain in the year 712 by obtaining possession of the apparently impregnable rock which has ever since borne the name, in consequence, of Jebel al tarik, the Mountain of Tarik. The Bosphorus is a Greek term composed of bous, an ox, and porus, a ford, alluding to the legend that when Io was transformed into a cow she forded this strait. The Dardanelles derive their name from the ancient city of Dardanus, founded by Dardanus, the ancestor of Priam, where the castle now stands on the Asiatic side.