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Although Alfred only mounted the throne of England in 872, it has been deemed proper to commence the series of this work with the discovery of Iceland by the Nordmen or Norwegians, about the year 861, as intimately connected with the era which has been deliberately chosen as the best landmark of our proposed systematic History and Collection of Voyages and Travels.
After the victory of Actium, which Augustus gained in a great measure by means of these ships, few were built by the Romans of any other construction. The other Liburnian vessels were small, for fishing and short voyages; some of these were made with osiers and covered with hides.
From the "Voyages of Samuel de Champlain," as published by the Prince Society of Boston in 1878, the translation being by Charles Pomeroy Otis. Samuel de Champlain, who has been called "The Father of New France," was born in Brouage, France, in 1567, and died in Quebec in 1635.
Salvadore; to whom, once, by way of discourse, having given account of my two voyages to the coast of Guinea and the manner of trading there for mere trifles, by which we furnish our plantations with Negroes, they gave such attention to what I said, that three of them came one morning to me, and told me they had a secret proposal to make.
Then she thanked him fairly, and turned and ran away to show herself to the maids in the bower. Einar was very thoughtful for a time; but brightened up when Gudrid and the girls brought in the meal, and served it. He told tales of his voyages and entertained the company.
"He did not return to Dacca, but I learn from one of his friends to whom he has written several times, and from Father Leclerc, who wrote regularly to Mme. Paindavoine, that they had a villa at Dehra. They selected this spot to live in as it was the center of his voyages; he traveled between the Thiberian frontier and the Himalayas.
The pleasures of the life which I then led soon made me forget the risks I had run in my two former voyages; but being then in the flower of my age, I grew weary of living without business; and hardening myself against the thoughts of any danger I might incur, I went from Bagdad with the richest commodities of the country to Balsora. There I embarked again with other merchants.
Among these obstacles may be mentioned the necessity of waiting for the favorable monsoon to set in, in order to perform the several voyages from one island to the other; the encumbered state of the grounds in many parts, the irregular and scattered situations of the settlements and dwellings, the variety among the natives and their dialects, the imperfect knowledge hitherto obtained of the respective limits and extent of many districts, the general want of guides and auxiliaries, on whom reliance can be placed, and, above all, the extreme repugnance the natives evince to the payment of tributes, a circumstance which induces them to resort to all kinds of stratagems, in order to elude the vigilance of the collectors, and conceal their real numbers.
It even gives them the privilege of being absurd; for pioneers sometimes take the wrong track. We do not scout Columbus because his domestic voyages were failures; nor because he sought one thing and found another, and died without knowing the difference.
It is argued that they made voyages on the “great exterior ocean,” and that such navigators must have crossed the Atlantic; and it is added that symbolic devices similar to those of the Phœnicians are found in the American ruins, and that an old tradition of the native Mexicans and Central Americans described the first civilizers as “bearded white men,” who “came from the East in ships.” Therefore, it is urged, the people described in the native books and traditions as “Colhuas” must have been Phœnicians.
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