a most
defective one. There were no logarithms, no means of determining at sea
the variations of the magnetic needle, no system of dead reckoning by
throwing the log and chronicling the courses traversed. The firearms with
which the sailors were to do battle with the unknown enemies that might
beset their path were rude and clumsy to handle. The art of compressing
and condensing provisions was unknown. They had no tea nor coffee to
refresh the nervous system in its terrible trials; but there was one
deficiency which perhaps supplied the place of many positive luxuries.
Those Hollanders drank no ardent spirits. They had beer and wine in
reasonable quantities, but no mention is ever made in the journals of
their famous voyages of any more potent liquor; and to this circumstance
doubtless the absence of mutinous or disorderly demonstrations, under the
most trying circumstances, may in a great degree be attributed.

Thus, these navigators were but slenderly provided with the appliances
with which hazardous voyages have been smoothed by modern art; but they
had iron hearts, faith in themselves, in their commanders, in their
republic, and in the Omnipotent; perfect discipline and unbroken
cheerfulness amid toil, suffering, and danger. No chapter of history
utters a more beautiful homily an devotion to duty as the true guiding
principle of human conduct than the artless narratives which have been
preserved of many of these maritime enterprises. It is for these noble
lessons that they deserve to be kept in perpetual memory.

And in no individual of that day were those excellent qualities more
thoroughly embodied than in William Barendz, pilot and burgher of
Amsterdam. It was partly under his charge that the first little
expedition set forth on the 5th of June, 1594, towards those unknown
arctic seas, which no keel from Christendom had ever ploughed, and to
those fabulous regions where the foot of civilized men had never trod.
Maalzoon, Plancius, and Balthaser Moucheron, merchant of Middelburg, were
the chief directors of the enterprise; but there was a difference of
opinion between them.

The pensionary was firm in the faith that the true path to China would be
found by steering through the passage which was known to exist between
the land of Nova Zembla and the northern coasts of Muscovy, inhabited by
the savage tribes called Samoyedes. It was believed that, after passing
those straits, the shores of the great continent wou