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The love of danger, the thirst for adventure, the thrilling sense of personal responsibility and human dignity not the base love for land and lucre were the governing sentiments which led those bold Dutch and English rovers to circumnavigate the world in cockle-shells, and to beard the most potent monarch on the earth, both at home and abroad, with a handful of volunteers.

Thus the dozen kingdoms of Spain, the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands, the kingdoms of the Two Sicilies, the duchy of Milan, and certain fortresses and districts of Tuscany, in Europe; the kingdom of Barbary, the coast of Guinea, and an indefinite and unmeasured expanse. of other territory, in Africa; the controlling outposts and cities all along the coast of the two Indian peninsulas, with as much of the country as it seemed good to occupy, the straits and the great archipelagoes, so far as they had been visited by Europeans, in Asia; Peru, Brazil, Mexico, the Antilles the whole recently discovered fourth quarter of the world in short, from the "Land of Fire" in the South to the frozen regions of the North as much territory as the Spanish and Portuguese sea-captains could circumnavigate and the pope in the plentitude of his power and his generosity could bestow on his fortunate son, in America; all this enormous proportion of the habitable globe was the private property, of Philip; who was the son of Charles, who was the son of Joanna, who was the daughter of Isabella, whose husband was Ferdinand.

A 'female villain' in the reign of Henry III. could have been purchased for eighteen shillings hardly the price of a fatted pig, and not one-third the value of an ambling palfrey and a male villain, such an one as could in Elizabeth's reign circumnavigate the globe in his own ship, or take imperial field-marshals by the beard, was worth but two or three pounds sterling in the market.

The plane of the ecliptic must therefore be conceived as slowly revolving in such a way as gradually to circumnavigate the heavens. This important phenomenon is described as the precession of the equinoxes.

Their provisions were already running near exhaustion; and they were feeding on raw seal-flesh, on snails and mussels, and on whatever the barren rocks and niggard seas would supply, to save them from absolutely perishing, but they held their resolve to maintain their honour unsullied, to be true to each other and to the republic, and to circumnavigate the globe to seek the proud enemy of their fatherland on every sea, and to do battle with him in every corner of the earth.

The love of danger, the thirst for adventure, the thrilling sense of personal responsibility and human dignity not the base love for land and lucre were the governing sentiments which led those bold Dutch and English rovers to circumnavigate the world in cockle-shells, and to beard the most potent monarch on the earth, both at home and abroad, with a handful of volunteers.

Although my first experimental voyage had proved so hazardous, now that I was better provided for meeting its perils, I became anxious to make another attempt to circumnavigate the island. The boat that had belonged to the wrecked ship, from the frequent trips I had made in her to and from the shore, I could manage as well as if I had been rowing boats all my life.

Phocion, who had charge of a squadron detached from the fleet of Chabrias, also sailed victorious round the Ægean, took twenty triremes, three thousand prisoners, with one hundred and ten talents in money, and annexed seventeen cities to the confederacy. Timotheus, the son of Conon, was sent with the fleet of Chabrias, to circumnavigate the Peloponnesus, and alarm the coast of Laconia.

If such favouring breezes would continue, he could circumnavigate the waters in a comparatively short time, and might return to Aurora, so far, at least, successful. Hope filled his heart, and he sang to the wind. The waves could not rise among these islands, which intercepted them before they could roll far enough to gather force, so that he had all the advantage of the gale without its risks.

The next moment he had set out to circumnavigate, as it were. What a prodigious force he expended upon it! How he gurgled and grinned and twisted his head to observe the effect upon the men, all sedulously gazing into the fire! how he bounced, and anon how he sank with sudden genuflections! how limber his feet seemed, and what free agents!