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 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