480 THE PROGRESS OF MARITIME DISCOVERT. 



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 Eussian Lapland, where to their glad surprise 

 they found their old comrade, John Cornells, 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 

 Eendragt'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 

 farrow through the South Sea, discovered Van Diemen's Land, 



