Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1872 — Missing Explorers. [ARTICLE]

M issing Explorers.

Mr. Stanley, haviag fairly established hia claim to have discovered the whereabouts of Dr. Livingstone, has added a chapter to the melancholy but interesting history of lost explorers. The lisLot them is longer than Slight be supposed, including in it the names of those whose fate has never been ascertained, of those the manner of whose death is known or conjectured with probability, and of those Who have temporarily disappeared . from observation, among which last Dr. Livingstone may happily now. be classed. Romance and mystery shroud the memories of those who have disappeared “leaving not a wreck behind.” There Is Eric, the good Christian Bishop of Greenland, who, in the year 1121, started for this continent to cod vert the red men, but how long he remained among them, or whether he ever got there, is unknown to this day. Then there is Prince Madoc, the son of Owen Gwyneth, King of Wales, who, in the year 1170, went to sea in search of adventures, and is said to have reached the shores of thia continent, and, to have left some of his people here. He went back to Wales for more colonists, and again started with ten ships full, but neither he. nor his ships were ever heard of afterward, and there are now no traces of his colony. In 1502, the Portuguese navigator, Gasper Cortereal. who had already explored ,the coast of Labrador, set out on a second exploration of that country, but not returning soon as was expected, his brother sailed in search of him. Ko account, however, of either of them ever reached Portugal. In 1549 the Sieur de Roberval. a wealthy Frenchman, who had been invested by Henry IL, of France, with the emptv titles of Lieutenant-General, Lord and Viceroy of all the islands and coun-

tries then discovered, either by the French or the English, and who had sailed up the st. Lawrence and built two forts near Quebec, started on a voyage of discovery and was never heard of again. In 1596 Captain Richard Chancellor, an English navigator, set out to explore the Arctic Ocean, but never returned. Many years afterward the remains of two’English ships were found on the coast of Spitzbergen, but it Is not certain that they were those of Chancellor. A similar uncertainty attaches to the fate of the French navigator, La Perbtisb, Who, in 1774, left France on an exploring expedition in the North Pacific, in command of two ships, La Boussole and L’Astrolabe. He never returned. Expeditions were sent to the North Pacific in search of him, but no traces were found of him until 1788, when another Frenchman (M. de Lesseps), landing on the coast of Kamtschatka, discovered some articles which had belonged to the missing ships; hence it was conjectured that they had been wrecked in the neighborhood. The fate of Leicliardt, the Australian explorer, is still Unknown. He started on his exploration in 1948, since which time nothing has been heard of him.

The fate of most other lost explorers has been ascertained sooner or later after their death. Without dwelling upon the mythic instances of the Irish Missionary lon, who came over to Massachusetts in the year, 1040,' and was murdered there by savages,' or one of the Italian brothers, Nicola and Antonio Zeno, who, in 1380, did the same thing anid met With the same fate, tlie list beginning with the Spaniard, Juan Ponce de Leon, is long enough. He was the explorer of Florida, and gave that State the name she bears, but he fell in a conflict with the natives. Francisco Fernandez de Cordova, another Spaniard, attempted the exploration of Yucatan, in 1517, but received a wound there, of which he died on his return to Cuba. The great Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand Magellan, (or, more properly, Mageihaens), the first European who sailed around the world, and gave the Pacific Ocean the name it bears, was killed in a fight with the natives of the Phillippine.lslands, in 1520. Pampilo de Nareuaz, commander of a Spanish expedition in search of a .wealthy empire somewhere in North America, was driven out to sea by a storm from the Bay of Appallachee, and drowned. This was in the year 1528. Fourteen years afterward the famous Spanish noble, Ferdinand De Soto, after countless adventures, died on the banks of the Mississippi. ,“To conceal his death from the natives, his body, wrapped in a mantle, and placed in a rustic coffin, in the stillness of midnight, and in the presence of a few faithful followers, was silentlysunk in the middle of the itream.” In 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed from England,, with the design of founding a colony on this continent, but his ship ■was wrecked, and all on board perished. This brings us to more modern times. Tn 1779 the illustrious English navigator, .Captain James Cook, was killed by the natives of Hawaii, while he was engaged in the humane attempt to stop his men from firing on them. In 1805, the- famous Scotch traveler, Mungo Park, having explored the Niger and reached Timbuctoo, was attacked by the natives, near this mysterious city, and, in endeavoring to escape by swimming, ho and: all his companions were drowned. This fact was ascertained by a native guide, three months afterward, but it was not known in England until five years later. In 1816, John Williams, an English missionary to the New Hebrides, was killed and eaten by the natives. In 1822, the three Englishmen, Denham, Audney and Clappetton, with others, explored the North of Africa, by way of Tripoli, the Great Desert of Sahara and the Kingdom of Bornou. Audney died of disease and privation. The others returned home, but, Clapperton, a few months afterward, died while exploring the Niger, and his “faithful follower, Richard Lauder, perished by the hands of the natives. Major Alexander G. Laing met with a like fate in-1826. In 1845, Sir John Franklin started on his fatal Arctic voyage, and he and all his companions were lost; his fate was not ascertained until 1859. The lamented missionary, Allen Gardener, died of starvation, on Pictou Island, in 1851. The German Asiatic traveler,. Adolph -Schlagenweit, ; was murdered in 1857, by a native chieftain. The bodies of Burke and Willis, and four other explorers, w’ere found in the wilds of Australia in 1861.Philadelphia Ledger.