A Book of Discovery | Page 2

wooden sailing ships the men of old faced every conceivable danger, and surmounted obstacles unknown to modern civilisation.
"Now strike your Sails ye jolly Mariners, For we be come into a quiet Rode."
For the most part we are struck with the light-heartedness of the olden sailor, the shout of gladness with which men went forth on these hazardous undertakings, knowing not how they would arrive, or what might befall them by the way, went forth in the smallest of wooden ships, with the most incompetent of crews, to face the dangers of unknown seas and unsuspected lands, to chance the angry storm and the hidden rock, to discover inhospitable shores and savage foes. Founded on bitter experience is the old saying--
"A Passage Perilous makyth a Port Pleasant."
For the early navigators knew little of the art of navigation.
Pytheas, who discovered the British Isles, was "a great mathematician." Diego Cam, who sailed to the mouth of the Congo, was "a knight of the King's household." Sir Hugh Willoughby, "a most valiant gentleman." Richard Chancellor, "a man of great estimation for many good parts of wit in him." Anthony Jenkinson, a "resolute and intelligent gentleman." Sir Walter Raleigh, an Elizabethan courtier, and so forth.
It has been obviously impossible to include all the famous names that belong to the history of exploration. Most of these explorers have been chosen for some definite new discovery, some addition to the world's geographical knowledge, or some great feat of endurance which may serve to brace us to fresh effort as a nation famous for our seamen. English navigators have been afforded the lion's share in the book, partly because they took the lion's share in exploring, partly because translations of foreign travel are difficult to transcribe. Most of these stories have been taken from original sources, and most of the explorers have been allowed to tell part of their own story in their own words.
Perhaps the most graphic of all explorations is that written by a native of West Australia, who accompanied an exploring party searching for an English lad named Smith, who had been starved to death.
"Away, away, away, away; we reach the water of Djunjup; we shoot game. Away, away, away through a forest away, through a forest away; we see no water. Through a forest away, along our tracks away; hills ascending, then pleasantly away, away, through a forest away. We see a water--along the river away--a short distance we go, then away, away, away through a forest away. Then along another river away, across the river away. Still we go onwards, along the sea away, through the bush away, then along the sea away. We sleep near the sea. I see Mr. Smith's footsteps ascending a sandhill; onwards I go regarding his footsteps. I see Mr. Smith dead. Two sleeps had he been dead; greatly did I weep, and much I grieved. In his blanket folding him, we scraped away the earth. The sun had inclined to the westward as we laid him in the ground."
The book is illustrated with reproductions from old maps--old primitive maps, with a real Adam and Eve standing in the Garden of Eden, with Pillars of Hercules guarding the Straits of Gibraltar, with Paradise in the east, a realistic Jerusalem in the centre, the island of Thule in the north, and St. Brandon's Isles of the Blest in the west.
Beautifully coloured were the maps of the Middle Ages, "joyous charts all glorious with gold and vermilion, compasses and crests and flying banners, with mountains of red and gold." The seas are full of ships--"brave beflagged vessels with swelling sails." The land is ablaze with kings and potentates on golden thrones under canopies of angels. While over all presides the Madonna in her golden chair.
The Hereford Mappa Mundi, drawn in the thirteenth century on a fine sheet of vellum, circular in form, is among the most interesting of the mediaeval maps. It must once have been gorgeous, with its gold letters and scarlet towns, its green seas and its blue rivers. The Red Sea is still red, but the Mediterranean is chocolate brown, and all the green has disappeared. The mounted figure in the lower right-hand corner is probably the author, Richard de Haldingham. The map is surmounted by a representation of the Last Judgment, below which is Paradise as a circular island, with the four rivers and the figures of Adam and Eve. In the centre is Jerusalem. The world is divided into three--Asia, "Affrica," and Europe. Around this earth-island flows the ocean. America is, of course, absent; the East is placed at Paradise and the West at the Pillars of Hercules. North and South are left to the imagination.
And what of the famous map of Juan de la Cosa, once pilot to Columbus, drawn in the fifteenth century,