The mariners of the sixteenth century are no exception to the rule that the biography of great men illustrates the period in which they lived. Francesco Pizarro might have been a cowherd at Seville for ever, instead of a viceroy at Lima, for any value attaching to his biography to the student of European politics; but he and Cortez, Cartier, Hawkins, Drake, and many another, marked an epoch in the history of maritime adventure, namely, the period which witnessed the union of science and enterprise—a union enabling the sailor to navigate his bark into the wide and unknown seas, where no landmark points the course—a union which gave to civilisation another world. The Phoenician groping his way, hugging the land along the shores of Africa and Spain, and shooting across the channel, with the sun and stars alone to steer by, until he touched the lonely but rich shores of the Cassiterides, was a mariner of equal daring with those who, westward ho! set sail for the Spanish Main; but, with an increase of knowledge, there had been discovered a new world—a world that, without the sensitive needle, and the discovery of the fact that it was ever true to its magnetic principle, true as the star to which the sailor from Tyre had in his day attached his faith —and for the subduing of that world it was necessary there should be a new departure, not in enterprise, for that was conspicuous in the earth's central sea, but a union of scientific knowledge with the enterprise and energy common to all young nations—at least to all nations which have made their mark in the world, and left the impress of their life upon time's honourable records.