Expeditions & Discoveries Books

On the seventh day out we saw a dim vast bulk standing up out of the wastes of the Pacific and knew that that spectral promontory was Diamond Head, a piece of this world which I had not seen before for twenty-nine years. So we were nearing Honolulu, the capital city of the Sandwich Islands—those islands which to me were Paradise; a Paradise which I had been longing all those years to see again. Not... more...

CHAPTER I. Passage from Ulietea to the Friendly Isles, with a Description of several Islands that were discovered, and the Incidents which happened in that Track. 1774 June On the 6th, being the day after leaving Ulietea, at eleven o'clock a.m., we saw land bearing N.W., which, upon a nearer approach, we found to be a low reef island about four leagues in compass, and of a circular form. It is... more...

CHAPTER 1. DEPARTURE AND PROVISIONING EN ROUTE. 1699. THE AUTHOR'S DEPARTURE FROM THE DOWNS. I sailed from the Downs early on Saturday, January 14, 1699, with a fair wind, in His Majesty's Ship the Roebuck; carrying but 12 guns in this voyage and 50 men and boys with 20 months' provision. We had several of the King's ships in company, bound for Spithead and Plymouth, and by noon we... more...

TO FORESTAUpon the road to Faerie,O there are many sights to see,—Small woodland folk may one discernHousekeeping under leaf and fern,And little tunnels in the grassWhere caravans of goblins pass,And airy corsair-craft that floatOn wings transparent as a mote,—All sorts of curious things can beUpon the road to Faerie!Along the wharves of Faerie—There all the winds of ChristendieAre musical with... more...

In the days of Plato, imagination found its way, before the mariners, to a new world across the Atlantic, and fabled an Atlantis where America now stands.  In the days of Francis Bacon, imagination of the English found its way to the great Southern Continent before the Portuguese or Dutch sailors had sight of it, and it was the home of those wise students of God and nature to whom Bacon gave his New... more...

CHAPTER I THE VOYAGE TO CUBA The sight of the greater part of their fleet disappearing in the direction of home threw back the unstable Spanish colony into doubt and despondency. The brief encouragement afforded by Ojeda's report soon died away, and the actual discomforts of life in Isabella were more important than visionary luxuries that seemed to recede into the distance with the vanishing... more...

CHAPTER I A blue-nose ancestry with Yankee proclivities—Youthful fondness for the sea—Master of the ship Northern Light—Loss of the Aquidneck—Return home from Brazil in the canoe Liberdade—The gift of a "ship"—The rebuilding of the Spray-Conundrums in regard to finance and calking—The launching of the Spray. In the fair land of Nova Scotia, a maritime province, there is a ridge... more...

CHAPTER I.—HER BIOGRAPHY. Ida Pfeiffer, the celebrated traveller, was born in Vienna on the 14th of October 1797.  She was the third child of a well-to-do merchant, named Reyer; and at an early age gave indications of an original and self-possessed character.  The only girl in a family of six children, her predilections were favoured by the circumstances which surrounded her.  She was bold,... more...

FOREWORD The struggle for the North Pole began nearly one hundred years before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock, being inaugurated (1527) by that king of many distinctions, Henry VIII of England. In 1588 John Davis rounded Cape Farewell, the southern end of Greenland, and followed the coast for eight hundred miles to Sanderson Hope. He discovered the strait which bears his name, and... more...

WANDERINGS WITH AN IDEA The man to whom Columbus proposed to address his request for means with which to make a voyage of discovery was no less a person than the new King of Portugal. Columbus was never a man of petty or small ideas; if he were going to do a thing at all, he went about it in a large and comprehensive way; and all his life he had a way of going to the fountainhead, and of making flights... more...