including headings Movement and exploration, Navigation by Polaris, The coast of northwest Europe, Chang Ch'ien, The known world, ...
Local exploration of the coasts of Australia begins in 1796 when George Bass and Matthew Flinders undertake a series of journeys in open whaleboats. In 1798 Bass sails round Tasmania, proving it to be an island (separate...
Europe's exploration of the world begins in the 15th century, pioneered by Portugal. The Portuguese sailors are under the control of Henry, one of the sons of John I. Although no seaman himself, his energy and vision ear...
An important expedition to the east leaves Lisbon in 1497. In July Vasco da Gama sails south in his flagship, the St Gabriel, accompanied by three other vessels. In late November the little fleet rounds the Cape o...
Many and varied motives lie behind Prince Henry's African expeditions. In part they are pure voyages of discovery, driven by a longing to know what new places, people, animals or plants may lie beyond the next forbidding...
The profitable trade in eastern spices is cornered by the Portuguese in the 16th century to the detriment of Venice, which has previously had a virtual monopoly of these valuable commodities - until now brought overland...
With this chain of fortified ports of call, and with no vessels in the Indian Ocean capable of challenging her power at sea, Portugal has a monopoly of the eastern spice trade....
The two most significant Portuguese voyages of exploration take place a generation after the death of Henry the Navigator. In the first, in 1487-8, Bartolomeu Dias proves that there is a sea route round the southern tip...
Alexander Mackenzie, whose explorations open up northwest Canada, is an employee of the North West Company. This is an enterprise founded in 1783 by traders in Montreal to develop the French fur trade, the profits of wh...
The age of European exploration, from the 16th century, leads to interesting encounters between traders accustomed to a cash economy and traditional tribes valuing shells (cowries in Africa, wampum in America) as preciou...
Cook's second purpose is exploration. He is to continue the search for the supposed southern land, Terra Australis, and he is to chart the coast of the known territory of New Zealand. He has among his passengers scientis...
The Portuguese, in their bold exploration along the coasts of Africa, have an underlying purpose - to sail round the continent to the spice markets of the east. But in the process they develop a trading interest and a la...
The voyages of James Cook are the first examples of exploration undertaken on scientific principles. His first expedition, sailing in the Endeavour from Plymouth in 1768, has a scientific task as its central missi...
A Russian army officer, Nikolai Mikhailovich Przewalski, specializes during the 1870s in journeys of exploration through the bleak regions of northeast Asia. Wherever he goes, he collects specimens of the plants and wil...
It has been the most dramatic and arduous of all the great journeys of African exploration of the previous twenty years. When the remnants of the party reach Boma, more than half the Africans recruited three years previo...
