PART II—FROM COLUMBUS TO COOK

CHAPTER IV(Continued)EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONSPART II—FROM COLUMBUS TO COOK

CHAPTER IV(Continued)EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS

ornate capital W

Whyto Spain? It is an “oft-told tale,” and the merest reminder is all that is needed here. Columbus was a young seafaring man, born at Genoa about 1434, and ambitious to become a master of his profession, and especially to acquire great wealth. He traveled to Venice, Barcelona, and other cities where learning was to be gained, and became thoroughly acquainted with all the astronomical and geographical science of the time, and especially proficient in the art of cartography. Attracted by the naval activity in Portugal under that indefatigable Prince Henry, Columbus went to Lisbon about 1454, and endeavored to find a leading place in the sea-work that country was doing. But Portugal’s eyes were so blinded by the glamour of Africa and the East Indies that she had no time to follow the gaze of this young and ardent Genoese captain whose eyes were turned steadily toward the west, where, more and more insistently, he urged that a sea-track, straight as a line of latitude marked on a globe, lay open to the Indies and the coasts of Cathay. To prove this true would be not only a glorious exploit for any man, but an achievement of untold advantage to the nation under whose flag he sailed.

PORTRAIT-STATUE OF COLUMBUS IN MADRID.

Just how this conviction arose in the mind of Columbus we do not know. It was probably first a purely scientific conclusion from the facts of astronomy and geography that he had learned, encouraged by romantic traditions of western “Isles of the Blest.” A few scientific men agreed with him, but the great influence of the Church of Rome condemned such notions as opposed to the Bible and revealed religion; and the mass of the people, ignorant and superstitious, looked upon them as foolish, and laughed at Columbus as adreamer or worse. Between his danger of arrest and death as a heretic on the one hand, and imprisonment as a lunatic on the other, the man of science in those days had a hard time. Columbus therefore sought far and wide for evidence to support his theories and render them acceptable. How much he learned—what, in the way of facts, he actually knew—it is hard to say. Having fallen in love with a Portuguese lady of good family, he married and apparently settled in Portugal as his home, but continued his voyaging. He knew the Mediterranean from end to end. He made several voyages to the Guinea coast, and dwelt for a time at El Mina, then newly founded, satisfying himself of the foolishness of the common assertion that men could not live “under the equinoctial”—that is, near the equator. He went north to and beyond Iceland, and acquainted himself with those waters, and thus convinced himself that the ocean was everywhere navigable, and subject to uniform laws of tides, weather, etc. His mind was cleared more and more of the mists of fable and superstition, and all he learned brought into clearer view the truth of science as a guide. He devoted more and more attention to improving the means of finding the true position of a vessel at sea, and of keeping a true course by the compass,which he continually studied; and it was he who first discovered that some leagues west of the Azores lay the meridian of no variation—a meridian that has now moved eastward until it lies near London. Everywhere he interrogated explorers, discussed navigation with experienced captains, and sought the aid of new maps, improved instruments, and advancing knowledge; and yet mixed with all seem to have been a childlike vanity, credulity, and superstition, hard to reconcile with his courage and acumen.

How much actual evidence he had of the existence of lands below the Atlantic horizon unknown to his countrymen can never probably be satisfactorily answered. The latest critical biographer of Columbus, the great Spanish liberal statesman Emilio Castelar, considers that he was led to his discoveries by little, if anything, outside of pure reasoning upon the rotundity of the earth and other scientific data, and dismisses as fables or things unknown to Columbus all the Scandinavian discoveries of Greenland and the rest, and other stories of men who, it is said, had already seen the transatlantic world he sought. We are told that he learned of woods and canes like none that grew in Africa, of strange carvings, and even of the dead bodies of men, resembling those of the far East, being cast upon the shores of Africa and the islands near it, especially the Azores. It seems impossible that when he was in Iceland and the other northern regions, a man of his inquiring mind should not have learned something of Greenland and the continental shores beyond, especially when one remembers that for centuries previous Catholic missionaries had been reporting progress to Rome from that distant but real field of labor. It is quite likely that some knowledge of these facts, which must have been known to the professors of the universities of Pavia and Barcelona, where Columbus studied, and to other intelligent men of Italy and Spain with whom he came in contact, had caused Columbus to go to the north, for we know of no other errand. Perhaps he had heard of the Zeni.

ships of columbus

Especially to be noted is the allegation that Columbus possessed information as to the experience of a Frenchman named Jean Cousin,—a Dieppe sea-captain, who, it is asserted, discovered South America and the Amazon River in 1488. This claim has been lately reviewed (“Fortnightly Review,” January, 1894) by Captain Gambier of the British navy, and he decides that it is good; and that it was because Cousin’s first mate was one of the Pinçons that that firm was willing to assist Columbus, as a good investment.

Whatever he knew or did not know, and whatever may have been the difficulties in his way, Columbus spent many weary years in fruitless efforts to interest some government in his schemes. How finally he won Spain to his support, secured the aid of the Pinçons, merchant princes of Palos, and sailed from that port on August 3, 1492,—and it was Friday!—are details that need not be repeated. Equally well remembered are the story of his daring onward voyage, and of the glorious outcome when, on October 12, land was seen,—a new world found.

Expedition after expedition followed one another from Spain to the newly found possessions, some conducted by the earlier companions of Columbus, and all filled with adventurers who cared for nothing but plunder. One of these, led by an officer named Ojeda, reached the coast of Guiana in 1499, and coasted along the north shore of South America as far, probably, as Maracaibo. This was the first of the Spanish expeditions actually to set foot upon the mainland; and it would not have been mentioned out of its place (since Cabot, as we shall presently see, had landed on the continent nearly two years before) but for the fact that one of its members was that Amerigo Vespucci whose fortune it was to have his name attached to the continent.

Amerigo Vespucci (or Vespusze, as Columbus spells it) was a Florentine engaged in the shipping business who was attracted to Spain by the maritime activity there, and became interested in equipping the second flotilla of Columbus and in other similar enterprises for the government. The wealth and influence thus gained and his general abilities led him to join that expedition of Ojeda in 1499, and during the next four years he made three other voyages to Brazil, in which the bay of Rio Janeiro was entered (New Year’s day, 1501), and an exploration southward extended probably as far as South Georgia (Islands). Upon his return from this last voyage, in 1505, he publicly asserted that he had visited, in 1497, the coast of what is now the southern United States. It has lately been shown by Spanish records, however, that at that date he was busy in the government dockyards in Spain; therefore his assertion was false. It served, however, to deceive a forgetful public, and to procure for its author the coveted glory of being the first “discoverer” of the “New World,” as he first called it (though there is no evidence that he understood it to be a continent), and hence the one entitled to give it his name.

This bold claim achieved its purpose. The oldest known map of the whole world, datedA. D.1500, said to have been drawn by the great artist Leonardo da Vinci, from data furnished by Juan de la Cosa, and hence known to historians as the “De la Cosa Mappimundi” (it is preservedin Madrid), bears the name “America” across the new countries for the first known time; but Juan de la Cosa was with Ojeda and Vespucci on the expedition of 1499, and doubtless Vespucci managed the naming. In 1507, only a year after the death of Columbus, there appeared in France the “Cosmographie Introductio” of Waldseemüller (also called Hylacomylus), which was regarded as the most complete and authentic geography of its time; and here the name ofAmericawas boldly written across “a fourth part of the world, since Amerigo found it.” The name (a Latin derivative) was novel, easy to pronounce, no one knew or cared as to the right of it, and so it stood.

THE “SANTA MARIA”—THE FLAGSHIP OF COLUMBUS’ FLEET.

A few lines more as to the Spanish and Portuguese navigators in these waters, and then we shall have done with them for the present. In 1499 one of the Pinçons sailed from Spain straight to the Amazon, as has been mentioned, avoiding the West Indies, as if he knew precisely whitherhe was bound, and reached there in January of 1500. A few months later a large Portuguese expedition under Pedro Cabral, starting for India around the cape, was blown so far to the west that it ran against Brazil. Everybody was hitting upon untrodden shores in those inspiring days, and Cabral promptly took possession for his king. As this shore was outside (east of) the hemisphere assigned by the Pope to the Spanish, the Portuguese kept it for 389 years, in spite of Pinçon’s priority. In 1508 Ojeda obtained the government of the northern coast of South America, and Nicuesa of the region north of the Gulf of Darien; and with the arrival of these adventurers in New Spain began that era of rapine and horror which will forever disgrace the Spanish name. The rapacious governors and their wild crews quarreled and fought with each other as well as with the downtrodden natives, and exploration was carried on by piracy. A learned man, Martin Enciso, went out to take command in 1510, but he was deposed by his soldiers the next year and sent back to Europe, where he made the first book printed in Spanish (1519) describing America. His place was taken by Vasco Nuñez Balboa, who entered upon a career of exploration and peaceful conquest, generally conciliating the Indians, who told him of another sea not far to the west, and on September 25, 1513, guided him to the summit of a hill near Panama, whence he, first of Europeans, gazed upon the Pacific. Who can imagine the emotions of such a sight!—for it told the Spaniards that this land was not the eastern margin of Asia, but a new continent. Balboa made his way through the forests as rapidly as he could, and on the 29th, wading into the surf, banner in hand, took possession of the waters in the name of the King of Castile.

Balboa at once began preparations to utilize his discovery, for the Indians had also excited him and his men by tales of a country to the south abounding in gold. He cut and shaped timbers for small ships, and had with enormous trouble and labor transported these across the isthmus, intending there to build a fleet and sail southward, when he was superseded in command by a new governor, Pedrarias. This man, a jealous and brutal adventurer, on a false pretext of disloyalty arrested and beheaded Balboa before he could get away—an act that “was one of the greatest calamities that could have happened to South America at that time; for ... a humane and judicious man would have been the conqueror of Peru, instead of the cruel and ignorant Pizarro.” The frightful destruction of the country of the Incas soon followed, while Cortés overran Mexico and De Soto invaded Florida.

It has doubtless by this time been in the mind of more than one reader to ask whether, while the men of the Mediterranean region were makingthese notable searchings for new shores, the men of northern Europe were standing idle. What were the mariners of France and the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Great Britain, doing? Well, all were doing something, and some of them produced results of novel seafaring that were well worth the getting, but these were principally in far northern waters, as we shall read in the next chapter. It was not until the opening of the sixteenth century that in England, at least, that era of far voyaging began which signalized the Elizabethan age on the sea as much as the poets and dramatists and statesmen-writers of her court distinguished it on land.

A PEACEFUL DAY ON THE SPANISH MAIN.

It was, however, earlier than that—in the reign of Henry VII—that England’s story of discovery begins, and the first names are those of two Italians known in English as John and Sebastian Cabot, father and son, who were then residents of Bristol. The Bristol folk were at that time the foremost mariners of England, who often went to Iceland and all the nearer isles; and they firmly believed in certain traditional islands and coasts far away to the west, which seem to have been composed of no better material than the airy structures of the sunset clouds and the romantic tales of Phenician sailors and other travelers in the dawn of history. As long ago as when Strabo wrote, a century before the birth of Christ, these things were of old belief, and he recounts the delights then told of the “Isles of theBlest,” west of the farthest verge of Africa. When the Canary Islands became known as facts, the myth moved farther west; and when acquaintance with the Azores proved them to be only natural earth with a fair share of its ills, as well as of its good, people insisted that still other islands must lie farther away, where the Elysian Fields basked in perpetual summer and men were eternally happy. The old idea charms us even yet when we sing “Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood stand dressed in living green.”

VOYAGING TO THE ISLES OF THE BLEST.

But no such higher rendering occurred to the men of the earlier time. They believed firmly in the actual existence of these ever-fortunate islands under the sunset horizon of the Atlantic, and (in the north) called them the Isles of St. Brandon, the “green isle of Brazil” (the root of which word seems to express the idea of redness, such as appears in low sunset clouds), the Isle of the Seven Cities or Antillia, and by other names. Ferdinand Columbus, a son of Christopher, says in his “History” that his father fully expected to meet, “before he came to India, a very convenient island or continent from which he might pursue with more advantage his main design.” This does not prove that Columbus put any faith in the reality of these old notions, nor does he seem to be responsible for the fact that the nameAntilleswas immediately attached to the archipelago he actually did meet with, and TheBrazilsto a part of the mainland next found. These names had been appearing on conjectural maps of the Atlantic side of the earth formany years before his time; and that they represented realities to many hard-headed merchants and sailors of his time is shown conclusively by the fact that between 1480 and 1487 at least two carefully planned naval expeditions had gone from Bristol, England, in search of them. How much vague memories of early Norse and Irish findings in the west may have given weight in Bristol to these old myths is hard to say; but at any rate it was there the search for this pot of gold at the end of the rainbow bore unexpected and momentous results, but all were surprised at the distance involved.

About 1496 John Cabot, then a resident of Bristol, proposed to the king an expedition in search of a new route to the Indies by sailing due west from Ireland. Henry VII was excited by the news of Columbus’ southerly findings, and was eager to secure something of the kind for England. Nevertheless, although the king granted privileges that might prove profitable in case of success, he seems to have furnished no money. Cabot, therefore, sailed away, privately equipped, in a small caravel namedMatthew, carrying only eighteen persons.

Never was a voyage of discovery, the consequences of which were so far-reaching, entered upon with less pomp or flourish of trumpets. So little note of it was made at the time that the very name of John Cabot narrowly escaped being lost altogether, and the record of his work came very near being replaced by a confused account of the doings of his son Sebastian; for it was not until certain letters had been found—and that within a very few years—in the contemporary archives of Spain and other European countries, that we were able to give any sure account of the matter.

It is now plain that John Cabot, in theMatthew, leaving Bristol early in May, 1497, and having passed Ireland, shaped his course toward the north, then turned to the west and proceeded for many days until he came to land, where he disembarked on June 24, and planted an English flag.

There seems to be no doubt that this was the mainland of North America, and the general opinion has prevailed that his landfall was the extremity of Cape Breton. Cabot stayed some days, but how far he traced the coast, and whether he learned of Newfoundland or Prince Edward Island, are matters of conjecture. At any rate, he soon turned homeward, and arrived in Bristol probably on August 6.

We can imagine with what eagerness his story was listened to, as he told of the fair, temperate, well-wooded land, its people and animals and fruitfulness, that he had seen. But the thing that impressed the Bristol men most was the report of the enormous abundance of codfish there. This was something these canny men could see without any illusions, and possess themselves of regardless of papal bulls; and they at once abandonedtheir northern fishing-grounds and began to resort to the Banks of Newfoundland, whither they were quickly followed by large annual fleets of Norman, Breton, Spanish, and Portuguese fishermen. John Cabot intended to go again the next year and make his way onward to Japan, as he believed he could do, for, like the others, he thought what he had found was only a remote eastern part of Asia; and in 1498 he actually did sail westward from Bristol with five ships, victualed for a year. None of these ships ever returned, and no evidence exists that they ever reached their goal; and with them John Cabot, to whom England owed her early supremacy in North America, disappears from view.

Sebastian Cabot was a son of John Cabot, and a skilful map-maker. Whether he went with his father on the first voyage is disputed; there seems no direct evidence that he did so. That he did not go on the second voyage is plain, for he had a long subsequent career, of which accurate knowledge is a late acquisition; here it is only necessary to add that by his statements to Peter Martyr and others he allowed the erroneous impression to pass into history, if he did not directly authorize the lie, that it was he, and not his father, who discovered America and the fishing-grounds.

Now that the way across the Atlantic was learned, chivalrous sailors hurried to add what they could to the map. Corte-Real, a Portuguese of rank, struck northwest, and hit upon and named Labrador as early as 1500. The next voyage of prominence introduces the French as competitors, Francis I sending the Florentine Verrazano, a typical sea-rover of the period, who had already been to Brazil and the East Indies and was finally hanged as a pirate, to find out what he could about northern America. He steered west from the Madeira Islands in January, 1524, found land near Cape Fear (North Carolina), and claimed to have traced the coast as far north as Nova Scotia, besides entering a large bay (either New York or Narragansett). His whole story, however, rests on certain letters and maps the authenticity of which has been hotly disputed; and at any rate little, if anything, came of this voyage.

It was far different with the next one, however,—that one sent from France in 1534, under the command of Jacques Cartier, who sailed from St. Malo in two tiny vessels to Newfoundland, and learned of the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. Then, like all the other captains, none of whom could stay over winter in America, because their vessels were too small to store provisions, and because they were beset by fears, not only of visible savages, but of invisible hobgoblins, he returned to France. The next year found him back again, however, this time steering his vessels up the St. Lawrence to “Hochelaga” (Montreal), and later carrying home anaccount that led to so immediate a movement on the part of France that Canada was the scene of the earliest colonization of the New World, properly speaking, for the Spanish settlements in the south were thus far nothing but military stations. France, indeed, dreamed of obtaining the whole of North America for herself, and attempted soon after to colonize Florida and the Carolinas; but these attempts failed, and she was able to hold only the valley of the St. Lawrence and the shore of its gulf. These things happened later, however, and for many years the Atlantic coast of North America was left unclaimed by any one, while the English and Dutch were busy in the far north, the Spanish were rioting in the tropics, and the Portuguese turned their attention to the southern and eastern quarters of the globe. It is one of the most striking curiosities of the history of the development of civilization on the globe, following the stagnation of the middle ages and the desolation of the plague-ridden thirteenth century, that the most remote, unprofitable, unhealthy regions were so fiercely struggled for, while the best parts of the New World were left until the last.

Having found Brazil, both Spaniards and Portuguese proceeded to trace the continent southward, hoping to find a practicable way to Peru around it. Several experienced navigators worked southward, the best known of whom is Juan Diaz de Solis, who entered the La Plata River and was killed there by the Indians in 1516. Columbus had not been a moment too soon to be first. Nevertheless it was left to a stranger in those waters, the indomitable Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães), to reap the reward of success. The Pope and all the bishops still declared that the earth was flat; but so little was this now believed, even by themselves, that Magellan, who had just quitted the service of Portugal, dared to propose to “his most Catholic majesty” the King of Spain to sail west instead of east to the Moluccas, just as though the earth were globular and might be circumnavigated; and the king not only dared to listen, but approved of the proposition, which seemed entirely practicableifSouth America could be passed. That was the problem Magellan set himself to solve. Should he succeed, could the Moluccas be reached by sailing westward, then they would fall into that half of the earth given by the Pope to Spain, and Portugal’s present claim to them would be overthrown. Thus the experiment was well worth making in behalf of politics as well as knowledge, and Magellan was furnished with five ships, carrying two hundred and thirty-seven men. TheTrinidadwas the admiral’s ship; but theSan Vittoriawas destined for immortality.

He struck boldly for the Southwest, not crossing the trough of the Atlantic as Columbus had done, but passing down the length of it, his aim being to find some cleft or passage in the American continent through which he might sail into the Great South Sea. For seventy days he wasbecalmed under the line. He then lost sight of the North Star, but courageously held on toward the “pole antarktike.” He nearly foundered in a storm, “which did not abate till the three fires called St. Helen, St. Nicholas, and St. Clare appeared playing in the rigging of the ships. In a new land, to which he gave the name Patagoni, he found giants of “good corporature”.... His perseverance and resolution were at last rewarded by the discovery of the Strait named by him San Vittoria, in affectionate honor of his ship; but which, with a worthy sentiment, other sailors soon changed to theStraits of Magellan. On November 25, 1520, after a year and a quarter of struggling, he issued forth from its western portals, and entered the Great South Sea, shedding tears of joy, as Pigafetta, an eye-witness, relates, when he recognized its infinite expanse.... Admiring its illimitable but placid surface, and exulting in the meditation of its secret perils soon to be tried, he courteously imposed upon it the name it is forever to bear—thePacific Ocean....And now the great sailor, having burst through the barrier of the American continent, steered for the northwest, attempting to regain the equator. For three months and twenty days he sailed on the Pacific, and never saw inhabited land. He was compelled by famine to strip off the pieces of skin and leather wherewith his rigging was here and there bound, to soak them in the sea, and then soften them with warm water, so as to make a wretched food; to eat the sweepings of the ship and other loathsome matter; to drink water that had become putrid by keeping; and yet he resolutely held on his course, though his men were dying daily. As is quaintly observed, “their gums grew over their teeth, and so they could not eat.” [This was scurvy, the dread of all mariners in those times and long afterward.] He estimated that he sailed over this unfathomable sea not less than 12,000 miles.In the whole history of human undertakings [declares Dr. John W. Draper, from whose striking sketch of this achievement in his “Intellectual Development of Europe” I am quoting]—in the whole history of human undertakings there is nothing that exceeds, if, indeed, there is anything that equals, this voyage of Magellan’s. That of Columbus dwindles away in comparison. It is a display of superhuman courage, superhuman perseverance—a display of resolution not to be diverted from its purpose by any motive or any suffering....This unparalleled resolution met its reward at last. Magellan reached a group of islands north of the equator—the Ladrones. In a few days more he became aware that his labors had been successful. He met with adventurers from Sumatra. But, though he had thus grandly accomplished his object, it was not given to him to complete the circumnavigation of the globe. At an island called Zebu, or Mutan, he was killed, either, as has been variously related, in a mutiny of his men, or, as they declared, in a conflict with the savages, or insidiously by poison.... Hardly was he gone when his crew learned that they were actually in the vicinity of the Moluccas [having previously wandered too far north, and discovered the Philippines], and that the object of their voyage was accomplished....And now they prepared to bring the news of their success back to Spain. Magellan’s lieutenant, Sebastian d’Elanco, directed his course for the Cape of Good Hope, again encountering the most fearful hardships. Out of his slender crew he lost 21 men. He doubled the Cape at last; and on September 7, 1522, in the port of St. Lucar, near Seville, under his orders, the good shipVittoriacame safely to an anchor. She had accomplished the greatest achievement in the history of the human race. She had circumnavigated the earth.

And now the great sailor, having burst through the barrier of the American continent, steered for the northwest, attempting to regain the equator. For three months and twenty days he sailed on the Pacific, and never saw inhabited land. He was compelled by famine to strip off the pieces of skin and leather wherewith his rigging was here and there bound, to soak them in the sea, and then soften them with warm water, so as to make a wretched food; to eat the sweepings of the ship and other loathsome matter; to drink water that had become putrid by keeping; and yet he resolutely held on his course, though his men were dying daily. As is quaintly observed, “their gums grew over their teeth, and so they could not eat.” [This was scurvy, the dread of all mariners in those times and long afterward.] He estimated that he sailed over this unfathomable sea not less than 12,000 miles.

In the whole history of human undertakings [declares Dr. John W. Draper, from whose striking sketch of this achievement in his “Intellectual Development of Europe” I am quoting]—in the whole history of human undertakings there is nothing that exceeds, if, indeed, there is anything that equals, this voyage of Magellan’s. That of Columbus dwindles away in comparison. It is a display of superhuman courage, superhuman perseverance—a display of resolution not to be diverted from its purpose by any motive or any suffering....

This unparalleled resolution met its reward at last. Magellan reached a group of islands north of the equator—the Ladrones. In a few days more he became aware that his labors had been successful. He met with adventurers from Sumatra. But, though he had thus grandly accomplished his object, it was not given to him to complete the circumnavigation of the globe. At an island called Zebu, or Mutan, he was killed, either, as has been variously related, in a mutiny of his men, or, as they declared, in a conflict with the savages, or insidiously by poison.... Hardly was he gone when his crew learned that they were actually in the vicinity of the Moluccas [having previously wandered too far north, and discovered the Philippines], and that the object of their voyage was accomplished....

And now they prepared to bring the news of their success back to Spain. Magellan’s lieutenant, Sebastian d’Elanco, directed his course for the Cape of Good Hope, again encountering the most fearful hardships. Out of his slender crew he lost 21 men. He doubled the Cape at last; and on September 7, 1522, in the port of St. Lucar, near Seville, under his orders, the good shipVittoriacame safely to an anchor. She had accomplished the greatest achievement in the history of the human race. She had circumnavigated the earth.

The immediate result of this voyage was to impress Spain’s sovereignty upon the East Indies; but a vaster and more far-reaching consequence was the influence it exerted, by its proof that the world was really a globe, to free men’s minds from blind belief in and guidance by a tradition, which hadtaught that the earth was a flat plain surrounded by water,—an error sanctioned by St. Augustine and other influential teachers. Magellan impressed a name upon the greatest of the oceans, and has his own name gloriously emblazoned upon both the map of the earth and the map of the sky in the southern hemisphere; but his greatest title to honor, after all, is that he struck dogma the hardest blow it ever received.

SEA-SURF AT SANTO DOMINGO.

The sixteenth century seems to have been, outside of the Arctic regions, an era of surveying rather than of exploration by sea, yet some notable work was done in the East, where all nations now entered as competitors in the trade, seizing upon every island or mainland shore that they could, and holding their possessions as long as possible. Even the English entered heartily into this rivalry, the great East India Company having been founded in 1599. With its trading we have nothing to do, but must note that it extended knowledge of Oceanica considerably, and added greatly to Europe’s information as to India, the Malayan peninsula and larger islands, China, and Japan. The Spanish and Portuguese found themselves so busy in defending that to which they already laid claim that theyhad little time to search for new lands; and this sort of enterprise fell mainly to the Dutch, who, now that the Netherlands were at last free from the long and cruel tyranny of Spain, were energetically making up for lost time. Their captain, Van Noort, went out by way of the Straits of Magellan to the Philippines, and got back to Rotterdam between 1598 and 1601. Another fleet made the same voyage fifteen years later; and in 1616 Cape Horn was rounded by Willem Cornelis Schouten, who gave the name of his home village, Hoorn, to that desolate terminus of South America.

For many years geographers had held belief in a vast “southern continent,”—Terra Australis,—and most of the islands found in the South Pacific were accidental results of some attempt to reach it. New Guinea had been sighted a century before, and perhaps Australia also, of which several navigators got glimpses here and there early in the sixteenth century, satisfying them that it also was a great island. It was not until this century was half gone, however, that the map of that quarter of the “South Sea” was filled out with any accuracy; and this was due to the skill and labor of an eminent Dutch voyager, Abel Janszen Tasman, who was despatched southward with two ships by the colonial government at Batavia, where the Dutch had already gained political ascendancy.

“This voyage,” we are told, “proved to be the most important to geography that had been undertaken since the first circumnavigation of the globe.” Tasman sailed from Batavia in the yachtHeemskirk, on the 14th of August, 1642, and from Mauritius on the 8th of October. On November 24 high land was sighted in 42° 30´ S., which was named Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), and, after landing there, sail was again made, and New Zealand (at first called Staatenland) was discovered on the 13th of December. Tasman communicated with the natives and anchored in what he called Murderers’ Bay, because several men were massacred there by the natives. Thence he took an irregular course east and north, until he arrived at the Friendly Isles of Cook. In April, 1643, he was off the north coast of New Guinea, having meanwhile sailed around New Britain and New Ireland (now New Mecklenburg), and on June 15 he returned to Batavia.

The contribution to sea-knowledge of the remaining voyages in this century were mainly in the direction of a better understanding of winds, currents, ice movements, tides, and an improvement in the methods of building, rigging, and navigating vessels intended for long voyages. Map-making received a great impetus and was especially cultivated by the Dutch, among whom Mercator became famous by inventing the useful projection that bears his name and is still most commonly used. Nevertheless, the improvement, especially in instruments of navigation, was slow.The astrolabe generally gave place to the cross-staff; and this to a better device called the back-staff, of which an improved form, invented by John Davis, remained long in use. This was called the Davis quadrant; and with it “the observer stood with his back to the sun, and, looking through the sights, brought the shadow of a pin into coincidence with the horizon.” Many variations of this instrument were made, until, in the middle of the next century, it was superseded by the sextant. Thus before the close of the seventeenth century, astronomers and navigators had learned how to determine latitude fairly accurately, and the sailor had prepared for him a variety of tables of stars, almanacs, and other mathematical guides. The determination of longitude was yet difficult, however, owing largely to the imperfection of timepieces; and it was not until the last year of the century, signalized by the first recorded sea-voyage made purely for scientific purposes, that much advance was made. This voyage, lasting two years (1699-1700), was undertaken by the eminent English astronomer Edmund Halley for the express purpose of obtaining information necessary to the improvement of the compass and methods of ascertaining the position of a ship at sea, was productive of results of the greatest service, and placed the science of navigation upon a sure footing. It was followed early in the next century by the establishment in England of the Longitude Board, a scientific commission charged with the duty of determining longitudes and studying navigation. From this board came the “Nautical Almanac,” which first appeared in 1767, but similar almanacs are now published annually by the governments of almost all maritime powers, and the editorship is esteemed in the United States one of the most honored positions in the naval service. These books contain ephemerides, or tables of positions for each day of that year of all the heavenly bodies, “predictions of astronomical phenomena, and the angular distances of the moon from the sun, planets, and fixed stars,” all referred to some stated meridian.

With such an almanac, an improved compass, and one of Newton’s new sextants as a means of quick and accurate observation of sun and moon and stars, the navigator had little need to doubt as to where he was; and maps began to show a corresponding improvement in accuracy.

“BUCCANEERS AND MANY WILD SEA-ROVERS.”

The early part of this century, as we shall see later, was the era of the buccaneers and of many wild sea-rovers whose far-wandering barks, in search of adventure, picked up much information at the expense of human lives and hard-earned property. The foremost of these was Dampier, who seems to have gone almost everywhere a ship could go, and who found out many new things, which he had the power of telling well, as to Australasia; and the strait between New Guinea and New Britain, which hediscovered, is named after him. Many a commander was now cruising in those waters, however, under English and Dutch flags mainly, finding new lands and pillaging old ones—such as Roggewein, Anson, Byron, Wallis, Carteret, Bougainville, and others; and such important islands as Easter, Tahiti, Charlotte, and Gloucester groups, Pitcairn, and others, were found during the first half of this century. But now the English were to redeem their good name by sending out a government expedition, or series of expeditions, whose object was scientific discovery and the humane study of themen and resources on the other side of the world, instead of forced trade or bloody rapine. These were the three expeditions commanded by Captain James Cook, one of the most capable officers in the British navy.

The first voyage was made in 1767 for the purpose of carrying a party of astronomers and naturalists to Tahiti to observe there a transit of Venus, after which a survey was made of the then almost unknown coasts of New Zealand and Eastern Australia. The second voyage was to explore the Antarctic regions, whither the French had preceded him, as we shall see in the next chapter; and we need only say here that Cook finally disposed of the tradition of a vastterra australis—at any rate a habitable one. It is to his third voyage, then, that he principally owes his fame.

This was undertaken in pursuance of the ruling idea of his day, that a sea-route might be discovered north of the American continent, which would vastly shorten the trip from Europe to China and the Spice Islands. Others were seeking it directly by way of Baffin’s Bay, and Cook was sent to attack the problem from the Pacific side. He was given command of his old shipResolutionand a new one,Discovery, outfitted in the best possible manner, and especially guarded, in the matter of provisions, against scurvy—that dread of the old-fashioned seamen, in respect to which Cook himself had introduced such new and valuable preventives as would alone have entitled his name to grateful remembrance. He was commanded to revisit, on his way out, the South Pacific Islands; and departed from England in June, 1776, steering by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and reaching the archipelagoes in the spring of 1777, where he cruised for nearly a year. In January, 1778, he sailed north from the Friendly Islands, and a few days later hit upon a large, inhabited, unknown group of islands, whose principal one was called Hawaii by the people, but which he named Sandwich Islands, in honor of an English earl who had taken great interest in his plans. Here he spent some delightful days, and then bore away to the west coast of America, which the English still claimed under Drake’s name of New Albion, and which he struck near Puget Sound. Thence he went slowly along the coast northward until he found and penetrated the deep bay since called Cook’s Inlet. His hope that this might prove a sort of northern Straits of Magellan was quickly disappointed, and he went on into and through Bering Sea and Strait until he was stopped by the ice on the north shore of Alaska, at a point still called Icy Cape. Then he turned back, surveying both shores of the strait, and again made his way to the Sandwich Islands, where, in an unfortunate quarrel with the natives, he was killed. The Hawaiians have always said that this was the act of a ruffian among them, and that the chiefs and the best of the people neverwished nor intended any harm to their visitors; and this is probably true. His executive officer took the ships back to England in October, 1780.

The voyages of this able and intelligent commander bore fruit in many ways. One was the colonization of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand by the English, which began in 1788. Another was the voyage of Vancouver to the west coast of America in 1792, which intercepted the surveys of the Spaniards there, under Quadra and others, and enforced English possession of all the country between the Californian settlements of the Spaniards and the Russian posts in Alaska, though he curiously failed to find either Puget Sound or the Columbia River. A third direct result, and from some points of view the most important one, was the opening of a great number of the South Sea Islands to Christian missionaries.

By this time there had arisen in the New World which these voyagers had first stumbled upon, and then searched for, and afterward scrutinized so carefully, a new, composite nation, which somehow forgot that all their broad and fertile land had been given away centuries before by an old gentleman in Rome to his friends the Spaniards, and acted as though they thought it belonged to themselves; and by and by this thriving nation hoisted a starry flag of its own, and proclaimed itself the United States of America. Then, not to be behind European powers, whose navigators were enriching libraries with magnificent chronicles of scientific studies in sea-science, such as those of the French “Voyage of theAstrolabe,” the Russian narratives of Krusenstern and Kotzebue, and the English explorations of Beechey (who was accompanied by Charles Darwin), the United States sent to the Pacific a well-equipped expedition under Lieutenant (afterward Admiral) Charles Wilkes. This was gone from 1838 to 1845, surveyed the west coast of South America, wandered about Oceanica, and did its best to penetrate the icy limits of the Antarctic zone. The results were six magnificent folio volumes, containing not only the narrative of the cruise, but contributions to science by James D. Dana, Horatio Hale, John Cassin, and other men of the last generation great in American science.

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