A Book of Discovery / The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest Times to the Finding of the South Pole

AUTHOR OF THE STORY OF THE WORLD A SHORT HISTORY OF SOCIAL LIFE IN ENGLAND ETC.
FULLY ILLUSTRATED FROM AUTHENTIC SOURCES AND WITH MAPS
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK, LTD. 35 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C., & EDINBURGH
Hope went before them, and the world was wide.
Such was the spirit in which the exploration of the world was accomplished. It was the inspiration that carried men of old far beyond the sunrise into those magic and silent seas whereon no boat had ever sailed. It is the incentive of those to-day with the wander-thirst in their souls, who travel and suffer in the travelling, though there are fewer prizes left to win. But
To travel hopefully, says Stevenson, is a better thing than to arrive. This would explain the fact that this Book of Discovery has become a record of splendid endurance, of hardships bravely borne, of silent toil, of courage and resolution unequalled in the annals of mankind, of self-sacrifice unrivalled and faithful lives laid ungrudgingly down. Of the many who went forth, the few only attained. It is of these few that this book tells.
All these, says the poet in Ecclesiastes— all these were honoured in their generation, and were the glory of their times ... their name liveth for evermore.
But while we read of those master-spirits who succeeded, let us never forget those who failed to achieve.
Anybody might have found it, but the Whisper came to Me.
Enthusiasm too was the secret of their success. Among the best of crews there was always some one who would have turned back, but the world would never have been explored had it not been for those finer spirits who resolutely went on—even to the death.
This is what carried Alexander the Great to the earth's utmost verge, that drew Columbus across the trackless Atlantic, that nerved Vasco da Gama to double the Stormy Cape, that induced Magellan to face the dreaded straits now called by his name, that made it possible for men to face without flinching the ice-bound regions of the far North.