It is but yesterday, as it were, that we have built ships fit for southern navigation; for navigation in those seas where the long, strong, _rollers_, pile themselves, each upon each, into absolutely mountainous masses of storm-lashed waves. What, then, shall we say of the early navigators who ventured into such seas with their clumsy leewards, heavy, and yet scarcely sea-worthy cock-boats? Especially for the polar seas, whether arctic or antarctic, we need ships expressly built for such rude service. They were bold men, those who, like a Cabot, a Brentz, a Willoughby, ventured in their clumsy, ill-found, badly rigged, and scarcely sea-worthy tubs to navigate the icy seas; to dare Spitzbergen, to make Greenland by that funereal cape _Farewell_, and to coast the thousand giant icebergs in sight of which, men in our own day, a hundred Whalers have gone to pieces. What chiefly rendered those ancient heroes so sublime was their very ignorance, their blind courage, their desperate resolution. They knew but little of the sea, and of the Heavens they knew still less; the compass, their only instructor and their only reliance, they dared the most alarming phenomena without being able even to guess at their causes. They had none of our instruments which speak to us so plainly and so unmistakably. They went blindfolded towards, and fearlessly into, the uttermost darkness. They, themselves, confess that they feared, but also, they would not yield. The sea's tempests, the air's whirlwinds and water spouts, the tragic dialogues of those two Oceans, of air and water, the striking, and, not so long since, ominous phenomena of the Aurora Borealis, all this strange and wild phantasmagoria seemed to them the fury of irritated Nature, a veritable strife of Demons against which man could _dare_ all--as they did--but could _do_ what they also did--nothing. During three centuries but little progress was made. Read Cook, read Peron, and you will readily comprehend how difficult, uncertain, and perilous was navigation, even up to an hour so near our own. Cook, that man of immense courage, but also, of most lively imagination, himself confesses, as his Journal testifies, that he knew how uncertain and perilous was the profession of the seaman even so lately as his day. In his Journal, we read; "The dangers are so great, that I venture to say, that no one will dare to go farther than I have gone." Now it is precisely since then that voyages have become, at once, more distant, more regular, and less dangerous.