Editing Northwest Passage (section)

===Strait of Anián===
{{Main|Strait of Anián}}
In 1539, [[Hernán Cortés]] commissioned [[Francisco de Ulloa]] to sail along the [[Baja California Peninsula]] on the western coast of North America. Ulloa concluded that the [[Gulf of California]] was the southernmost section of a strait supposedly linking the Pacific with the [[Gulf of Saint Lawrence]]. His voyage perpetuated the notion of the [[Island of California]] and saw the beginning of a search for the Strait of Anián.

The strait probably took its name from Ania, a Chinese province mentioned in a 1559 edition of [[Marco Polo]]'s book; it first appears on a map issued by Italian [[cartographer]] [[Giacomo Gastaldi]] about 1562. Five years later Bolognino Zaltieri issued a map showing a narrow and crooked Strait of Anian separating Asia from the Americas. The strait grew in European imagination as an easy sea lane linking Europe with the residence of [[Khagan]] (the Great Khan) in [[Cathay]] (northern China).

Cartographers and seamen tried to demonstrate its reality. Sir [[Francis Drake]] sought the western entrance in 1579. The [[Greeks|Greek]] pilot [[Juan de Fuca]], sailing from Acapulco (in Mexico) under the flag of the Spanish crown, claimed he had sailed the strait from the Pacific to the [[North Sea]] and back in 1592. The Spaniard [[Bartholomew de Fonte]] claimed to have sailed from [[Hudson Bay]] to the Pacific via the strait in 1640.