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We must make great allowance for the measurement of longitudes as computed in the days when the first circumnavigators were called upon to determine whether the Moluccas fell within the Spanish or the Portuguese territory, for, after their return, the matter was as unsettled as ever. Albeit, the errors of these charts are far more suggestive of deliberate distortion than, of inaccurate charting.

More justly than to anything else, it can be likened to the game of baseball. Crack! we hit the ball, and away we go. If we are thrown out, we walk back to the home plate and sit upon a bench. The circumnavigators of the alleged globe may have sailed the rim of a watery circle back to the same port again. The truly great return at the high tide of their attainments to the simplicity of a child.

"I must see after my new circumnavigators," he added in the same gruff tone as he turned his eyes on the two before-mentioned boys and one old sailor who, although he had followed the sea for twelve years, had never, until now, crossed the equator; "we must make a nearer acquaintance."

We will now add a few words with respect to the advantages arising from having thus digested the history of circumnavigators, from the earliest account of time to the present, and then shut up the whole with another section, containing the last circumnavigation by Rear-Admiral Anson, whose voyage has at least shown that, under a proper officer, English seamen are able to achieve as much as they ever did; and that is as much as was ever done by any nation in the world.

The first volume contains Voyages by the Ancient Circumnavigators of the Globe: Voyages along the Coasts of Africa to the East-Indies, Japan, China, Philippines, and the Persian and Arabian Gulphs. Vol. 2. contains Voyages and Relations of Africa, Ethiopia, Palestina, Arabia, Persia, Asia. Vol. 3. Tartary, China, Russia, North-west America, and the Polar Regions. Vol. 4.

Thus not unlike the rival circumnavigators from Spain and Portugal, who setting out in contrary directions, found themselves in company at the very time they thought themselves farthest from each other; so the bulk of professed Christians arrive, though by a different course, almost at the very same point, and occupy nearly the same station as a set of enthusiasts, who also rest upon a barren faith, to whom on the first view they might be thought the most nearly opposite, and whose tenets they with reason profess to hold in peculiar detestation.

The English circumnavigators tell us, that among the islanders of the South Seas, who in every mental qualification and acquirement are at the lowest grade of civilization, they yet observed a rude drama in which a common incident in life was imitated for the sake of diversion.

He upon another occasion, when a friend mentioned to him several extraordinary facts, as communicated to him by the circumnavigators, slily observed, 'Sir, I never before knew how much I was respected by these gentlemen; they told me none of these things. He had been in company with Omai, a native of one of the South Sea Islands, after he had been some time in this country.

They were the second nation that dared the extent of the Pacifick ocean, and the second circumnavigators of the globe. By the war between Elizabeth and Philip, the wealth of America became lawful prize, and those who were less afraid of danger than of poverty, supposed that riches might easily be obtained by plundering the Spaniards.

Ay, ay! we sailors sail not in vain, We expatriate ourselves to nationalise with the universe; and in all our voyages round the world, we are still accompanied by those old circumnavigators, the stars, who are shipmates and fellow-sailors of ours sailing in heaven's blue, as we on the azure main.