By this time there had arisen in the New World which these voyagers had first stumbled upon, and then searched for, and afterward scrutinized so carefully, a new, composite nation, which somehow forgot that all their broad and fertile land had been given away centuries before by an old gentleman in Rome to his friends the Spaniards, and acted as though they thought it belonged to themselves; and by and by this thriving nation hoisted a starry flag of its own, and proclaimed itself the United States of America. Then, not to be behind European powers, whose navigators were enriching libraries with magnificent chronicles of scientific studies in sea-science, such as those of the French “Voyage of the _Astrolabe_,” the Russian narratives of Krusenstern and Kotzebue, and the English explorations of Beechey (who was accompanied by Charles Darwin), the United States sent to the Pacific a well-equipped expedition under Lieutenant (afterward Admiral) Charles Wilkes. This was gone from 1838 to 1845, surveyed the west coast of South America, wandered about Oceanica, and did its best to penetrate the icy limits of the Antarctic zone. The results were six magnificent folio volumes, containing not only the narrative of the cruise, but contributions to science by James D. Dana, Horatio Hale, John Cassin, and other men of the last generation great in American science. [Illustration: end of chapter decoration] CHAPTER V SECRETS WON FROM THE FROZEN NORTH As soon as the sea-routes between Europe and the far East were learned, and the American coasts had been mapped, the region within the Arctic circle became the most attractive field for nautical discovery. All this earlier Arctic exploration, however, was not, as it has lately become, a system of scientific research, but was simply a series of attempts to open new roads for commerce to follow. It occurred to every navigator that as a sea-way had been gained past the southern end of America, so one around its northern border might be disclosed; and perhaps, also, a ship-route along the northern coast of Siberia. Either of these would be far shorter than to go to “Cathay” around either Cape Horn or Cape of Good Hope, and would enable the English and other northerners to avoid their enemies, the Spanish and Portuguese, who commanded the southern waters. The first Arctic voyage of exploration, properly speaking, was that of Willoughby and Chancellor, who in 1553 penetrated the seas north of Scandinavia, where they became separated. Willoughby and his men tried to winter on the coast of Russian Lapland, but all died of scurvy.