From the Book - [1st ed.]
Pt. 1: "Through a glass, darkly"
A voyage to the land of God (Queen Hatshepsut's expedition of 1493 B.C. to the golden land of Punt)
"And they beheld the sun on their right hand" (The Phoenicians, in 600 B.C., circumnavigate Africa)
"The world reaches this far and no farther" (Pytheas discovers Great Britain and Ultima Thule: 310 B.C.)
"Our merchants chase the sunrise down the paths of the Erythraean Sea" (A first-century voyage from Rome to the Malabar coast)
Odysseus of the north (The semi-legendary voyages of Saint Brandan in search of America: circa A.D. 570)
"Beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars" (The eleventh-century Vikings attempt to colonize the New World)
Pt. 2: The golden age of discovery
Out of darkness (The rounding of Cape Bojador by Gil Eannes marks the end of the Middle Ages)
The rediscovery of America (A joint Danish-Portuguese expedition reaches the New World twenty years before Columbus)
The greatest voyage of all (Magellan, first round the world: A.D. 1519-1522)
"All night the Arctic foxes pattered across our roof" (The voyage of William Barents in 1596-7 in search of a North-east passage)
Austrialia del espiritu santo (The voyage of Pedro Fernandez de Quiros to Australasia "for the saving of countless million souls": 1605-6)
Venus, sauerkraut and Yorkshire grit (James Cook delineates the Pacific: 1768-71)
Pt. 3: The farthest ends of the Earth
On the edge of a dream (Parry's discovery in 1819 of a strait reaching deep into the heart of the Arctic gives new life to the quest for a North-west passage)
The last continent (James Clark Ross discovers Antarctica: 1840-41)
The last ocean: 1. (In the voyage of the Jeanette, 1879-81, George Washington De Long Pioneers a route through the heart of the Arctic)
2. (In the drift of the Fram, 1893-6 Fridtjof Nansen crosses the last of the oceans by the route dreamed of by De Long).
