It was from this plan, as it had been communicated to the Portuguese court, that the famous Magellan came to have so just notions of the possibility of sailing by the West to the East Indies; and there was a great deal of theory in the proposal made by that great man to the Emperor Charles V. Sir Francis Drake was a person of the same genius, and of a like general knowledge; and it is very remarkable that these three great seamen met also with the same fate; by which I mean, that they were constantly pursued by envy while they lived, which hindered so much notice being taken of their discourses and discoveries as they deserved. But when the experience of succeeding times had verified many of their sayings, which had been considered as vain and empty boastings in their lifetimes, then prosperity began to pay a superstitious regard to whatever could be collected concerning them, and to admire all they delivered as oraculous. Our other discoverer, Candish, was likewise a man of great parts and great penetration, as well as of great spirit; he had, undoubtedly, a mighty genius for discoveries; but the prevailing notion of those times, that the only way to serve the nation was plundering the Spaniards, seems to have got the better of his desire to find out unknown countries; and made him choose to be known to posterity rather as a gallant privateer than as an able seaman, though in truth he was both.
After these follow Schovten and Le Maire, who were fitted out to make discoveries; and executed their commission with equal capacity and success. If Le Maire had lived to return to Holland, and to have digested into proper order his own accounts, we should, without question, have received a much fuller and clearer, as well as a much more correct and satisfactory detail of them than we have at present: though the voyage, as it is now published, is in all respects the best, and the most curious of all the circumnavigators.
This was, very probably, owing to the ill-usage he met with from the Dutch East India Company; which put Captain Schovten, and the relations of Le Maire, upon giving the world the best information they could of what had been in that voyage performed. Yet the fate of Le Maire had a much greater effect in discouraging, than the fame of his discoveries had in exciting, a spirit of emulation; so that we may safely say, the severity of the East India Company in Holland extinguished that generous desire of exploring unknown lands, which might otherwise have raised the reputation and extended the commerce of the republic much beyond what they have hitherto reached. This is so true that for upwards of one hundred years we hear of no Dutch voyage in pursuit of Le Maire's discoveries; and we see, when Commodore Roggewein, in our own time, revived that noble design, it was again cramped by the same power that stifled it before; and though the States did justice to the West India Company, and to the parties injured, yet the hardships they suffered, and the plain proof they gave of the difficulties that must be met with in the prosecution of such a design, seem to have done the business of the East India Company, and damped the spirit of discovery, for perhaps another century, in Holland.
It is very observable that all the mighty discoveries that have been made arose from these great men, who joined reasoning with practice, and were men of genius and learning, as well as seamen. To Columbus we owe the finding America; to Magellan the passing by the straits which bear his name, by a new route to the East Indies; to Le Maire a more commodious passage round Cape Horn, and without running up to California; Sir Francis Drake, too, hinted the advantages that might arise by examining the north-west side of America; and Candish had some notions of discovering a passage between China and Japan. As to the history we have of Roggewein's voyage, it affords such lights as nothing but our own negligence can render useless. But in the other voyages, whatever discoveries we meet with are purely accidental, except it be Dampier's voyage to the coasts of New Holland and New Guinea, which was expressly made for discoveries; and in which, if an abler man had been employed in conjunction with Dampier, we cannot doubt that the interior and exterior of those countries would have been much better known than they are at present; because such a person would rather have chosen to have refreshed in the island of New Britain, or some other country not visited before, than at that of Timer, already settled both by the Portuguese and the Dutch.
In all attempts, therefore, of this sort, those men are fittest to be employed who, with competent abilities as seamen, have likewise general capacities, are at least tolerably acquainted with other sciences, and have settled judgments and solid understandings.
These are the men from whom we are to expect the finishing that great work which former circumnavigators have begun; I mean the discovering every part and parcel of the globe, and the carrying to its utmost perfection the admirable and useful science of navigation.
