f sailors sent forth by the Dutch republic, and a rich harvest in
consequence was to be reaped both by science and commerce. It is true,
too, that the Netherlanders claimed to have led the way to the great
voyages of Columbus by their discovery of the Azores. Joshua van den
Berg, a merchant of Bruges, it was vigorously maintained, had landed in
that archipelago in the year 1445. He had found there, however, no
vestiges of the human race, save that upon the principal island, in the
midst of the solitude, was seen--so ran the tale--a colossal statue of a
man on horseback, wrapped in a cloak, holding the reins of his steed in
his left hand, and solemnly extending his right arm to the west. This
gigantic and solitary apparition on a rock in the ocean was supposed to
indicate the existence of a new world, and the direction in which it was
to be sought, but it is probable that the shipwrecked Fleeting was quite
innocent of any such magnificent visions. The original designation of the
Flemish Islands, derived from their first colonization by Netherlanders,
was changed to Azores by Portuguese mariners, amazed at the myriads of
hawks which they found there. But if the Netherlanders had never been
able to make higher claims as discoverers than the accidental and dubious
landing upon an unknown shore of a tempest-tost mariner, their position
in the records of geographical exploration would not be so eminent as it
certainly is.

Meantime the eyes of Linschoten, Plancius, Maalzoon, Barneveld, and of
many other ardent philosophers and patriots, were turned anxiously
towards the regions of the North Pole. Two centuries later--and still
more recently in our own day and generation--what heart has not thrilled
with sympathy and with pride at the story of the magnificent exploits,
the heroism, the contempt of danger and of suffering which have
characterized the great navigators whose names are so familiar to the
world; especially the arctic explorers of England and of our own country?
The true chivalry of an advanced epoch--recognizing that there can be no
sublimer vocation for men of action than to extend the boundary of human
knowledge in the face of perils and obstacles more formidable and more
mysterious than those encountered by the knights of old in the cause of
the Lord's sepulchre or the holy grail--they have thus embodied in a form
which will ever awaken enthusiasm in imaginative natures, the noble
impulses of our latter civilizat