VOYAGE OF THE ROEBUCK 335 



was very profitable. We seem to be once more in the 

 spacious days of Drake. With astonishing ease Spanish 

 towns were sacked, and Spanish ships were captured. Then 

 they ran along Dampier's old route to Guam, and then 

 sailed among the islands off New Guinea ; and Rogers 

 agreed with Dampier's opinion that these islands should 

 be of special interest to commercial Englishmen. " It 

 is most certain these islands would all of them bear spice, 

 and afford immense riches to this nation if they were 

 settled." They came to Batavia, where the seamen 

 got arrack for eight pence a pound, and thought them- 

 selves in Paradise. They were home in September 1711, 

 and the syndicate made a nett profit of 170,000. 



Here ends knowledge of Dampier's life. " He 

 vanishes," says the modern biographer, " like a puff of 

 tobacco smoke." 1 He died in 1715. He is important 

 in our story, not as a discoverer, but as a student and as 

 a writer. He discovered nothing that had not been dis- The value of 

 covered before, save the Eastern coast of New Britain, 

 and the strait between that island and New Guinea. But 

 his writings, immensely and deservedly popular, made 

 people understand the interest of the South Sea. English- 

 men had hitherto known nothing and thought nothing 

 of the South Sea. The learned might read old records 

 of the voyages of Quiros, Le Maire and Tasman ; but 

 they read them without interest and without faith, as 

 one would read a rather dull fairy-tale. For the unlearned 

 there was nothing to read. To both learned and unlearned 

 Dampier's narratives revealed a new and a strange world, 

 crowded with things interesting to men of all sorts and 

 conditions. The young lady of Queen Anne's reign could 

 afford v to leave the latest novel, even by Defoe, uncut 

 upon her table ; for the best things in the latest novel 

 were taken, without acknowledgment, from the pages 

 of Dampier and his " fellow travellers." Men of science 

 found a new world of deeper interest ; they could study 

 the only exact account of tropical plants and animals 

 in a book that was a vivid record of strange adventure. 

 1 Clark Russell, p. 182. 



