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Intercourse with Nature I mean intellectual intercourse, not merely the emotional intercourse of the sailor or explorer or farmer tends to beget a habit of mind the farthest possible removed from the myth-making, the vision-seeing, the voice-hearing habit and temper.
The crusading spirit was hot within him, and he hoped to continue in Africa the old struggle of the Portuguese Christians against the Moorish infidels. Yet it was the instinct of the explorer that inspired Prince Henry with the steady devotion to his life work. Besides this he had some important personal knowledge.
He entered the Royal Navy in 1800 at fourteen years of age, and within a year was engaged on his ship, the Polyphemus, in the great sea-fight at Copenhagen. During the brief truce that broke the long war after 1801, Franklin served under Flinders, the great explorer of the Australasian seas.
The first duty of the conscientious explorer is to study his own neighbourhood, so we set off to familiarize ourself with Vesey Street. Upon this firm foundation it erects a seemly interest in letters. The wanderer who passes up the short channel of our street, from the docks to St. Paul's churchyard, must not be misled by the character of the books the bibliothecaries display in their windows.
The tall girl of twenty became the leader, the heroine, the queen; and Mary Blanchet, sensible little woman enough in many ways, would have turned African explorer or joined in a rebellion of women against men if Miss Grey had given her the word of command. "I know your mind is made up, dear, now that you have come," Miss Blanchet said when the first rapture of greeting was over.
This must always rest upon grounds altogether independent of the merits of his work as a composition; and whatever may be hereafter thought of his claims to distinction as a writer, his fame as a geographical discoverer, an explorer of unknown countries, and a man of courage and capacity in the most arduous and trying situations, must ever remain undiminished.
But our hero was a born explorer, and could not be content with not examining the strange coast upon which he found himself.
He seemed particularly amused at the harum-scarum idea that had tempted our young explorer to these distant fields, for few men knew more about the fearful difficulties awaiting the venturesome nomad in those lonely wastes beyond than did the veteran factor, since many a time and oft he had roamed toward the arctic circle in search of new opportunities, and had the humor seized him he could have told thrilling stories of what he had seen and endured there.
It was another world into which I had come; a world of unbroken repose and silence, a world of sweet and fragrant airs cooled by the mountain rivulet and shielded by the mountain summits and the arching umbrage. The path vanished at last and nothing remained but the narrow channel of the brook itself, the smooth stones making a precarious and uncertain footing for the adventurous explorer.
But these voyages, in a sense tentative, were completely eclipsed by the expedition undertaken in the Vega, in which Nordenskiold accomplished the long-desired North-East Passage from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific Ocean eastwards. Sebastian Cabot was the first adventurer in the work destined to be accomplished by the Swedish explorer.
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