Early explorers, including Jacques Cartier and Sir Francis Drake, spent years searching in vain for a Northwest Passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific through the Canada’s Arctic archipelago. Such a passage would have expedited trade and exploration, but treacherous conditions made finding the route perilous, and no early explorer managed it. In 1906 Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer, finally made it through the 900-mile Northwest Passage above Alaska.