480 THE PROGRESS OF MARITIME DISCOVERY. 
presence of mind and agility of De Veer, who with a well- 
secured rope leaped from one fragment of ice to another till he 
gained a firm field, on which first the sick, then the stores, the 
crews, and finally the boats themselves, were safely landed. 
Here they were obliged to remain while the boats underwent 
the necessary repairs, and during this detention upon a floating 
ice-field the gallant Barentz closed the eventful voyage of his 
life. He died as he had lived, calmly and bravely, thinking less 
of himself than of the safety of his crew, for his last words 
were directions as to the course in which they were to steer. 
Even the joyful prospect of a return to their families and home 
could not console his surviving comrades for the loss of their 
leader, whom they loved and revered as a friend and father. 
After a most tedious and dangerous passage, they at length 
arrived at Kola in Russian Lapland, where to their glad surprise 
they found their old comrade, Jobn Cornelis, who received them 
on board his vessel and conveyed them to Amsterdam. 
During the seventeenth century the most remarkable maritime 
discoveries were made by the English, Dutch, and Spaniards, 
though by the latter only at its commencement. In the year 
1605 Quiros sailed from Callao, discovered the island of 
Sagittaria, since so renowned under the name of Otaheite, and 
the archipelago of Espiritu Santo, or the New Hebrides of Cook. 
On this journey he was accompanied by Torres, the bold seaman 
who some years after gave his name to the strait which separates 
New Guinea from Australia. 
While the declining sun of Spain was thus gilding with its 
last rays the northern shore of New Holland, the meridian 
splendour of the Batavian republic cast forth bright beams of 
light over the wide Pacific. 
Schouten and Le Maire, penetrating through the strait which 
is still named after the latter, sailed in the year 1616 round 
Tierra del Fuego; and about the same time Hartog discovered 
Fendragt’s Land, on the west coast of Australia. The successive 
voyages of Jan Edel (1619), Peter Nuyts (1627), and Peter 
Carpenter (1628), brought to light the northern and southern 
shores of the vast island, which thus began to assume a rude’ 
shape on the map of the geographer. In the year 1642, Abel: 
Tasman, the greatest of the Dutch navigators, drew a mighty 
furrow through the South Sea, discovered Van Diemen’s Land, 
