Northwest Passage is a water route, long sought by explorers, across or around North America. The explorers who followed Christopher Columbus soon found that North America was not a part of Asia, as they had believed at first. At that time, English, French, and Dutch adventurers were more interested in finding an easy route to Asia than they were in exploring and settling North America. So they began to look for a "Northwest Passage," or waterway, that would take them around or through the North American continent.