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Christopher Columbus, Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook. Henry Stanley finding Dr. Livingston. All these conjure up the excitement of discovery and exploration. In their time, each of these men stood on uncharted soil. In some cases they planted a flag and said something like: "I claim these lands in the name of God and His Royal Majesty King Edward (or King George or Queen Isabel) . . ."
These early explorers dedicated their lives to discovering new lands (and, they hoped, riches) and claiming them in the name of their royal sovereign. Some traveled by tiny ships into unknown waters on trips that sometimes lasted many years. They did it for God and country (although money and adventure also played a part), often with their lives in danger from savages or unknown diseases. Those were dramatic times.
Have you ever wondered what it was like back then? I have. Most people today can travel to these once-exotic places in a fraction of the time it once took. On one of many trips, I remember looking down from the aircraft and wondering what it was like in the days of those early explorers. You read of Stanley and Livingston and their struggles deep in the jungles of Africa. Africa is still mysterious. What must it have been like then?
Or in faraway Australia, what thoughts went through Captain Cook's mind when he sailed into Botany Bay back in April 1770 ? What must Dutch captain Willem Jansz have thought as he sailed through Australian waters 164 years earlier?
Both he and Captain Cook were thousands of miles and months away from their home waters. Who knew what awaited them in this faraway land? Whatever their circumstances or thoughts, they could never have dreamed of the ease with which we now do things that were so difficult for them.
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