Expeditions & Discoveries Books

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...

INTRODUCTION. Lewis Holberg, the author of the Narrative of Niels Klim, was the most eminent writer among the Danes in the eighteenth century. His works show a surprising versatility of genius, comprising Histories and Treatises on Jurisprudence, together with Satires and Comedies. He was by birth a Norwegian, but was educated at the University at Copenhagen in Denmark. Soon after receiving a... more...

There is no one of the Pioneers of this continent whose achievements equal those of the Chevalier Robert de la Salle. He passed over thousands of miles of lakes and rivers in the birch canoe. He traversed countless leagues of prairie and forest, on foot, guided by the moccasined Indian, threading trails which the white man's foot had never trod, and penetrating the villages and the wigwams of... more...

Chapter I. Jean-Francois Galaup, Comte De Laperouse, was born at Albi, on August 23, 1741. His birthplace is the chief town in the Department of Tarn, lying at the centre of the fruitful province of Languedoc, in the south of France. It boasts a fine old Gothic cathedral, enriched with much noble carving and brilliant fresco painting; and its history gives it some importance in the lurid and exciting... more...

The writing of historical biography is properly a work of partnership, to which public credit is awarded too often in an inverse proportion to the labours expended. One group of historians, labouring in the obscurest depths, dig and prepare the ground, searching and sifting the documentary soil with infinite labour and over an area immensely wide. They are followed by those scholars and specialists in... more...

PRINCIPALL SECRETARIE TO HER MAIESTIE, MASTER OF THE COURT OF WARDES AND LIUERIES, AND ONE OF HER MAIESTIES MOST HONOURABLE PRIUIE COUNSELL. Right Honorable, hauing newly finished a Treatise of the long Voyages of our Nation made into the Leuant within the Streight of Gibraltar, and from thence ouer-land to the South and Southeast parts of the world, all circumstances considered, I found none to whom I... more...

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR ROBERT CECIL[1] KNIGHT. Principall Secretarie to her Maiestie, Master of the Court of Wards and  Liueries, and one of her Maiesties most honourable Priuie Councell. Right honourable, your fauourable acceptance of my second volume of the English voyages offred vnto you the last yere, your perusing of the same at your conuenient leasure, your good testimony of my selfe and... more...

THE ISLE OF PINES The scene opens in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the year 1668, where in one of the college buildings a contest between two rival printers had been waged for some years. Marmaduke Johnson, a trained and experienced printer, to whose ability the Indian Bible is largely due, had ceased to be the printer of the corporation, or Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, but... more...

CHAPTER I WHICH WAY? When you have noticed a fly crawling on a ball or an orange has it ever occurred to you how a man would look crawling about on the earth if seen from a great height? Our world is, as everyone knows, like an orange in shape, only it is very much larger in comparison with us than an orange is in regard to a fly. In fact, to make a reasonable comparison, we should have to picture the... more...

CHAPTER 1.Plan of the Expedition.Outfit and Occurrences to the time of leaving England.Description of the Breadfruit.1787. The King having been graciously pleased to comply with a request from the merchants and planters interested in his Majesty's West India possessions that the breadfruit tree might be introduced into those islands, a vessel proper for the undertaking was bought and taken into... more...