Burton Richard Francis - Lives of the explorers: discoveries, disasters (and what the neighbors thought)

Tianfei, the Chinese goddess of sailors and seafarers

Text copyright 2014 by Kathleen Krull

Illustrations copyright 2014 by Kathryn Hewitt

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

ISBN 978-0-15-205910-1

eISBN 978-0-544-30149-8
v3.0617

Welcome to Cassius and Julius, current and future explorers.

K.K.

To Steve and Yong

(Man was born with legs, not roots.R. Buckminster Fuller)

K.H.

Exploring the unknown: its what humans do. Since the beginning of time, we have wanted to know what else might be out there.

Though many explorers are lost to history, we know some by name. Here, presented chronologically, are the biographies of twenty bright stars of geography. Other books trace the east-west-north-south details of their journeys to faraway countries (referred to here by their present-day names, though they might have been called something else in the past). This book is about the explorers as human beingswarts, egos, and all. Some were not well-liked by their neighbors or anyone else; many were cruel. But all were bold and determined. These were men and women who took a deep breath, got up out of their chairs, and went adventuring by land, sea, or air.

Their motives varied. Many were lured by glamour and the possibility of riches. Others were driven by curiosity or a passion for expanding human knowledge about the world. Still others wanted to escape the boredom of their settled lives. The journey of a heroic explorerespecially if he or she was a good writer, which many of these wereoften inspired others to get moving.

The stress of facing the unknown day after day is not for the faint of heart. Homesickness was the least of an explorers problems. Who had to follow a path of boneshuman and animalacross the sands of the Sea of Death? (Polo.) Whose cat screamed across the deck, warning of disaster? (Hudsons.) Which explorer had a young crew of more than 250, of whom only eighteen made it home? (Magellan.) Who lost eleven of his crew to cannibals? (Cook.) Who was accidentally shot by one of his own men? (Lewis.) Who emerged from a swamp covered in black slime and leeches, weak from loss of blood? (Kingsley.) Which ones got totally lost? (Columbusand many others.) Who survived kidnapping? (Battuta and Boone.) Who was taunted, spat at, stoned, and had people try to break down her door? (Bird.)

And some explorers failed to survive at all. Their trips were life-or-death journeys with every possible danger, few conveniences, and no GPS.

Many of the courageous people here were inspired by books about explorers that theyd read in childhood. May this book inspire you to also forge new paths, remaining brave and full of wonder even when everything ahead of you is unknown.

Kathleen Krull

Even baby Vikings knew their way around a boat, and Leif Ericson knew more than most. He grew up on a cliff overlooking the ocean, in a house made of mud and stone. His dad, Eric the Red, had come from Scandinavia and discovered Greenland, and the family settled in one of its nicer areas. But the winters seemed endless, and there were no treesno green (ironically), no shade, no timber for building houses.

Ericson grew up hearing magical tales of lands covered with forests. At about age twenty-one, taking along some thirty others, he set out to find them.

In sagas told around the fire for the next ten centuries, Ericson was a large, strong man, of very striking appearance and wise, as well as being a man of moderation in all things. Vikings in general were more famous for fierceness than moderation. They carried weapons at all times (axes, swords, arrows, spears), wore shirts made of bearskin, and howled like wolves to frighten their enemies.

Aboard ship, Ericsons men ate fresh whale, seal, or caribou. At night they passed the time with stories about Thor and other gods. They played a game similar to chess; they carved spoons or figurines of gods from wood or bone. They doubled up to sleep in the animal-skin sacks that they used for holding tools.

Ericson landed in North America very pleased indeed: temperatures were above freezing, huge salmon jumped out of the rivers, the green grass would feed the livestock, and the landscape was dense with trees. He spent the winter and then sailed home, his boat loaded with precious timber.

His voyage inspired other explorers, while Ericson stayed in Greenland as the master of his estate. When he died at about age fifty, he left it all to his son.

Almost everything known about Leif Ericson was guesswork until 1961. In Newfoundland, on the coast of Canada, archaeologists found the remains of an ancient Greenland-style settlement, complete with a woodworking shopbelieved to be Ericsons.

Marco Polos father was a merchant, the job everyone in Venice wanted. One successful trip to a faraway place for rare goods could make a family permanently wealthy. In highest demand were jewels, spices, Turkish carpets, and especially silk. Silk was so precious because it was rare, made only in China by women who took the strands that silkworms produced and transformed them into gorgeous cloth.

Polos dad was away so long on a trading trip that Marco was fifteen before they met. Having grown up with relatives after his mother died, the boy had assumed he was an orphan. When his father and uncle invited him to join their next trip, he jumped at the chance. The older Polos had promised to bring holy oil from Jerusalem to Kubla Khan, emperor of China, and do a lot of trading on the way.

The three planned to sail, but when they saw their shoddy shipsheld together with coconut twine, not nailsthey quickly changed their plans and set off on what was later known as the Silk Road. This ancient system of trails, thousands of miles long, was the only known route into China by land.