Adventurers & Explorers Books

CHAPTER I. Early Discoveries in the Fifteenth Century. LEGENDS OF THE SEA. Modern familiarity with navigation renders it difficult for us to appreciate adequately the greatness of the enterprise which was undertaken by the discoverers of the New World. Seen by the light of science and of experience, the ocean, if it has some real terrors, has no imaginary ones. But it was quite otherwise in the... more...

TO THE RIGHT HONORABLEROBERT D’EVREVX, EARLE OF ESSEX AND EVVE, VISCOVNT of Hereford and Bourchier, Lord Ferrers ofChartley, Bourchier, and Louaine, Maisterof the Queenes Maiesties horse,and knight of the most honorableorder of the Garter. T. C.vvisheth increase of allhonour and happinesse. Right Honorable, hauing by chaunce recouered of late into my handes (after I had once lost the same) a copie of... more...

FOREWORD Friends of Arctic exploration and discovery, with whom I have come in contact, and many whom I know only by letter, have been greatly interested in the fact of a colored man being an effective member of a serious Arctic expedition, and going north, not once, but numerous times during a period of over twenty years, in a way that showed that he not only could and did endure all the stress of... more...

CHAPTER I. Blessed shade of a beloved sister!  The sacrifice of my adverse and dreadful fate!  Thee could I never avenge!  Thee could the blood of Weingarten never appease!  No asylum, however sacred, should have secured him, had he not sought that last of asylums for human wickedness and human woes—the grave!  To thee do I dedicate these few pages, a tribute of thankfulness; and, if future... more...

INTRODUCTION. There were two cousins Von der Trenck, who were barons descended from an ancient house in East Prussia, and were adventurous soldiers, to whom, as to the adventurous, there were adventures that lost nothing in the telling, for they were told by the authors’ most admiring friends—themselves.  Franz, the elder, was born in 1711, the son of an Austrian general; and Frederick, whose... more...

CHAPTER I. The family of Daniel Boone—His grandfather emigrates to America, and settles in Bucks County, Pennsylvania—Family of Daniel Boone's father—Account of Exeter, the birth-place of Boone—Birth of Daniel Boone—Religion of his family—Boone's boyhood—Goes to school—Anecdote—Summary termination of his schooling. The immediate ancestors and near relations of the American... more...

CHAPTER I. — THE OLD HOMESTEAD IN IOWA. A PLEASANT, roomy farm-house, set in the sunlight against a background of cool, green wood and mottled meadow—this is the picture that my earliest memories frame for me. To this home my parents, Isaac and Mary Cody, had moved soon after their marriage. The place was known as the Scott farm, and was situated in Scott County, Iowa, near the historic little town... more...

PREFACE When I first broached the matter of writing his autobiography to John H. Cady, two things had struck me particularly. One was that of all the literature about Arizona there was little that attempted to give a straight, chronological and intimate description of events that occurred during the early life of the Territory, and, second, that of all the men I knew, Cady was best fitted, by reason of... more...

INTRODUCTION. THE GREEK AND ARABIC IDEAS OF THE WORLD, AS THE CHIEF INHERITANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN MIDDLE AGES IN GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE. rabic science constitutes one of the main links between the older learned world of the Greeks and Latins and the Europe of Henry the Navigator and of the Renaissance. In geography it adopted in the main the results of Ptolemy and Strabo; and many of the Moslem... more...

I F ever a compelling Fate set its grip upon a man and drove him to an accomplishment beside his purpose and outside his thought, it was when Henry Hudson—having headed his ship upon an ordered course northeastward—directly traversed his orders by fetching that compass to the southwestward which ended by bringing him into what now is Hudson's River, and which led on quickly to the founding of... more...