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.