They shaped their course toward the dark unknown, constantly exposed to being engulfed and destroyed by the vague, mysterious dangers that lay in wait for them somewhere in that dim vastness.

The beginnings were small, but by degrees much was won.  One stretch of country after another was discovered and subjected to the power of man.  Knowledge of the appearance of our globe became ever greater and took more definite shape.  Our gratitude to these first discoverers should be profound.

And yet even to-day we hear people ask in surprise:  What is the use of these voyages of exploration?  What good do they do us?  Little brains, I always answer to myself, have only room for thoughts of bread and butter.

The first name on the roll of discovery is that of Prince Henry of Portugal, surnamed the Navigator, who is ever to be remembered as the earliest promoter of geographical research.  To his efforts was due the first crossing of the Equator, about 1470.

With Bartholomew Diaz another great step in advance was made.  Sailing from Lisbon in 1487, he reached Algoa Bay, and without doubt passed the fortieth parallel on his southward voyage.

Vasco da Gama’s voyage of 1497 is too well known to need description.  After him came men like Cabral and Vespucci, who increased our knowledge, and de Gonneville, who added to the romance of exploration.

We then meet with the greatest of the older explorers, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese by birth, though sailing in the service of Spain.  Setting out in 1519, he discovered the connection between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in the strait that bears his name.  No one before him had penetrated so far South —­ to about lat. 52deg.  S. One of his ships, the Victoria, accomplished the first circumnavigation of the world, and thus established in the popular mind the fact that the earth was really round.  From that time the idea of the Antarctic regions assumed definite shape.  There must be something in the South:  whether land or water the future was to determine.

In 1578 we come to the renowned English seaman, Sir Francis Drake.  Though he was accounted a buccaneer, we owe him honour for the geographical discoveries he made.  He rounded Cape Horn and proved that Tierra del Fuego was a great group of islands and not part of an Antarctic continent, as many had thought.

The Dutchman, Dirk Gerritsz, who took part in a plundering expedition to India in 1599 by way of the Straits of Magellan, is said to have been blown out of his course after passing the straits, and to have found himself in lat. 64deg.  S. under high land covered with snow.  This has been assumed to be the South Shetland Islands, but the account of the voyage is open to doubt.

In the seventeenth century we have the discoveries of Tasman, and towards its close English adventurers reported having reached high latitudes in the South Atlantic.