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Ormond G. Smith, George C. Smith, | } | Proprietors. |
STREET & SMITH, Publishers, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York City. |
[HUDSON AND THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE.]
A short time ago the newspapers announced that a feat which for four hundred years stout ships and bold crews have been attempting had been accomplished by a little Norwegian vessel of forty tons and seven men.
Long ago, the news would have thrilled the harbors of England and Holland with joy and keen expectancy. Coming in the twentieth century, it has created little sensation. Perhaps, of all those who read the announcement, only the few to whom "the Northwest Passage" was a name full of history and heroism and romance realized what an interesting achievement had been made. For the practical value of the discovery had long since been discounted, and no "merchant adventurer" of the present day would have sunk half his fortune in equipping an expedition to solve the riddle that puzzled the brains of the men of long ago.
For the search for the Northwest Passage was from the first a business affair. It was a mercantile question. The whole inquiry arose out of a trade competition between the northern and southern seafaring nations.
This was the situation: Spain and Portugal had been first in the field, as regards over-sea discovery; they had found the way to the treasure house of Asia, and the unspoiled riches of the New World. The Portuguese held the monopoly of maritime trade with India—the Venetians had long governed the overland route, and grown wealthy thereby—and the Spaniards looked upon South America as their private property.