others, and the frequent appearance
of his name on a modern chart of this coast still commemorates them.

Of Dampier's personality his writings give us little insight. As a good
writer should, he keeps his private affairs out of his book, but how much
we should have been interested in knowing something of the man's shore
life! Mr. Clark Russell in his admirable sketch of Dampier, for example,
takes it for granted that he never married, at any rate during his sea
career. Dampier himself tells us he was married, and gives us a very good
idea of when, but he so seldom, after once getting to work upon his
narrative, gives us a glimpse of himself that it is easily understood how
Mr. Russell came to miss that passage in the _Voyage round the World_ in
which the old sailor tells us how in 1687 he named an island the Duke of
Grafton's Isle "as soon as we all landed on it, having married my wife out
of the Duchess's family and leaving her at Arlington House at my going
abroad."

He was, perhaps, not a great man, though a good sailor, who had certain
qualities which placed him above his fellows. We imagine somehow that his
expressed pious dislike for buccaneering was not altogether the cause of
his abandoning the life, and that when he set out upon his career as an
explorer the search for a land where gold could be easily got without
fighting for it was his main motive. He himself tells us so, but we think
that he might have been a greater man if his mind had been capable of a
little higher aim than the easy getting of riches. The obscurity of his
end is not remarkable when one considers how little was then thought of
the value of his discoveries. It took many years for Cook's survey of New
Holland to bring forth fruits.

In his third volume, written after his return from Ascension, he says:--

"It has always been the fate of those who have made new
discoveries to be disesteemed and slightly spoken of by such as
either have had no true relish and value for the things themselves
that are discovered, or have had some prejudice against the
persons by whom the discoveries were made. It would be vain,
therefore, and unreasonable in me to expect to escape the censure
of all, or to hope for better treatment than far worthier persons
have met with before me. But this satisfaction I am sure of
having, that the things themselves in the discovery of which I
have been employed are most worthy of ou