Explore "A New Voyage Round the World, by a Course Never Sailed Before" by Daniel Defoe on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It has for some ages been thought so wonderful a thing to sail the tour / or circle of the globe, that when a man has done this mighty feat, he / presently thinks it deserves to be recorded like Sir Francis Drake's. So / soon as men have acted the sailor, they come ashore and write books of / their voyage, not only to make a great noise of what they have done / themselves, but pretending to show the way to others to come after them, / they set up for teachers and chart makers to posterity. Though most of / them have had this misfortune, that whatever success they have had in / the voyage, they have had very little in the relation; except it be to / tell us, that a seaman when he comes to the press, is pretty much out of / his element, and a very good sailor may make but a very indifferent / author.
I do not in this, lessen the merit of those gentlemen who have made such / a long voyage as that round the globe; but I must be allowed to say, as / the way is now a common road, the reason of it thoroughly known, and the / occasion of it more frequent than in former times, so the world has done / wondering at it; we no more look upon it as a mighty thing, a strange / and never heard of undertaking; this cannot be now expected of us, the / thing is made familiar, every ordinary sailor is able to do it, if his / merchants are but qualified to furnish him for so long a voyage; and he / that can carry a ship to Lisbon, may with the same ease carry it round / the world.