very notion of sailing round
the earth took rise; and the ingenious Genoese first laid down this
system of the world, according to his conception, and then added the
proofs derived from experience. It is much to be deplored that we have
not that plan of discovery which the great Christopher Columbus sent over
thither by his brother Bartholomew to King Henry VII., for if we had we
should certainly find abundance of very curious observations, which might
still be useful to mariners: for it appears clearly, from many little
circumstances, that he was a person of universal genius, and, until bad
usage obliged him to take many precautions, very communicative.

It was from this plan, as it had been communicated to the Portuguese
court, that the famous Magellan came to have so just notions of the
possibility of sailing by the West to the East Indies; and there was a
great deal of theory in the proposal made by that great man to the
Emperor Charles V. Sir Francis Drake was a person of the same genius,
and of a like general knowledge; and it is very remarkable that these
three great seamen met also with the same fate; by which I mean, that
they were constantly pursued by envy while they lived, which hindered so
much notice being taken of their discourses and discoveries as they
deserved. But when the experience of succeeding times had verified many
of their sayings, which had been considered as vain and empty boastings
in their lifetimes, then prosperity began to pay a superstitious regard
to whatever could be collected concerning them, and to admire all they
delivered as oraculous. Our other discoverer, Candish, was likewise a
man of great parts and great penetration, as well as of great spirit; he
had, undoubtedly, a mighty genius for discoveries; but the prevailing
notion of those times, that the only way to serve the nation was
plundering the Spaniards, seems to have got the better of his desire to
find out unknown countries; and made him choose to be known to posterity
rather as a gallant privateer than as an able seaman, though in truth he
was both.

After these follow Schovten and Le Maire, who were fitted out to make
discoveries; and executed their commission with equal capacity and
success. If Le Maire had lived to return to Holland, and to have
digested into proper order his own accounts, we should, without question,
have received a much fuller and clearer, as well as a much more correct
and satisfactory detail o