ge indulged as to the polar regions. Four straits or
channels, pierced by a magic hand, led, it was thought, from the interior
of Muscovy towards the arctic seas. According to some speculators,
however, those seas enclosed a polar continent where perpetual summer and
unbroken daylight reigned, and whose inhabitants, having obtained a high
degree of culture; lived in the practice of every virtue and in the
enjoyment of every blessing. Others peopled these mysterious regions with
horrible savages, having hoofs of horses and heads of dogs, and with no
clothing save their own long ears coiled closely around their limbs and
bodies; while it was deemed almost certain that a race of headless men,
with eyes in their breasts, were the most enlightened among those distant
tribes. Instead of constant sunshine, it was believed by such theorists
that the wretched inhabitants of that accursed zone were immersed in
almost incessant fogs or tempests, that the whole population died every
winter and were only recalled to temporary existence by the advent of a
tardy and evanescent spring. No doubt was felt that the voyager in those
latitudes would have to encounter volcanoes of fire and mountains of ice,
together with land and sea monsters more ferocious than the eye of man
had ever beheld; but it was universally admitted that an opening, either
by strait or sea, into the desired Indian haven would reveal itself at
last.

The instruments of navigation too were but rude and defective compared to
the beautiful machinery with which modern art and science now assist
their votaries along the dangerous path of discovery. The small yet
unwieldy, awkward, and, to the modern mind, most grotesque vessels in
which such audacious deeds were performed in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries awaken perpetual astonishment. A ship of a hundred
tons burden, built up like a tower, both at stem and stern, and
presenting in its broad bulbous prow, its width of beam in proportion to
its length, its depression amidships, and in other sins against symmetry,
as much opposition to progress over the waves as could well be imagined,
was the vehicle in which those indomitable Dutchmen circumnavigated the
globe and confronted the arctic terrors of either pole. An
astrolabe--such as Martin Beheim had invented for the Portuguese, a
clumsy astronomical ring of three feet in circumference--was still the
chief machine used for ascertaining the latitude, and on shipboard