HUDSON'S BAY, a spacious gulf in the n.e. section of the American continent, may be regarded as an arm at once of the Arctic sea and of the Atlantic ocean. With the Atlantic ocean it communicates by means of a strait, which, besides being solidly bridged for about ten months of the year, is beset, even daring its brief period of navi gation, by detached floes and bergs of ice. The eastern portion of this outlet is broken up into two branches, offsets of Davis's strait, the more northerly bearing the name of Frobisher, and the more southerly that of Hudson. It is fully 400 in. long, and aver ages at least 100 m. in width. With the Arctic sea, again, Hudson's bay is connected by channels, which, notwithstanding the comparative lowness of their latitude, have proved far less practicable than the Arctic sea itself, never having been navigated throughout; but it is only within these 25 years that this hopeless result has been defini tively accepted by the world.
Hudson's hay, taken in its narrowest sense, extends in n. lat. from 51° to 624°, and in w. long. from 761° to 95°. When compared with the corresponding regions on the
eastern side of the Atlantic, the shores of Hudson's bay possess a singularly inhospitable climate. At York Factory, lying nearly in the latitude of Aberdeen, the finest weather of summer is liable to a wintry temperature through a lucre change of wind; and the most southerly extremity of the gulf is beset for months by snow at Ilia very season when the Faroe islands, stretching as far n. as the parallel of its opposite end, yield available pasture to sheep and cattle.
Though Hudson's bay is not particularly remarkable for the extent of its drainage, yet towards the s. and w. its basin meets at once the waters of the St. Lawrence, the Mis sissippi, the Columbia, and the Mackenzie. Its largest feeder, the Nelson, fills perhaps a full half of the area, touching the Rocky mountains on the w., embracing Rainy lake on the e., and considerably overlapping the international boundary on the south.