Strait of Anián
The Strait of Anián was the Spanish name for the Northwest Passage in the 16th century , which, according to the knowledge of the geographers at the time, was to connect the Pacific Ocean in the temperate to tropical latitudes of North America with the Atlantic Ocean . A later assumption said that such a waterway could lead from the Gulf of California to Baja California , which at the time was mistakenly believed to be an island off the American continent, the island of California , to the Gulf of St. Lawrence . All of these ideas were based on the idea that America was not a continent, just a vast archipelago . The Strait of Anián could never be found; today we know that no such waterway exists.
The name is probably derived from "Ania", a Chinese province that was mentioned in 1559 in an edition of Marco Polo's travelogue " Il Milione ".
In 1539, Hernán Cortés sent the explorer Francisco de Ulloa of Acapulco north along what is now Baja California to look for the Strait of Anián, which he did not find.
In 1848 a section of a navigable northwest passage was discovered by John Rae , and in 1850 Robert McClure actually discovered and confirmed the existence of such a seaway.
From 1903 to 1906, today's Northwest Passage, which runs through the Arctic Islands of Canada , was first crossed by ship by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen .