ages in their quite as dangerous experiences with the treacher- ous native tribes:
"And pray, Sir, what in the world is equal to it? [Referring to "the spirit by which that enterprising employment had been exercised"] Pass by the other parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. Falklands Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambi- tion, is but a stage, and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. . . . No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hard industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood."
This spirit of enterprise which the Columbia's voyages so signally exemplify has been in eclipse as to this honor it had be- cause of the momentous project of political or territorial ex- pansion it enkindled. When all nationalities have become equally democratic and equally enamored with the mission of human welfare it may be possible that this spirit of human enterprise animating these voyages, now largely unnoticed, may outshine the nationalism that has heretofore enveloped them.
F. G. YOUNG.
