Page:Robert William Cole - The Struggle for Empire; A Story of the Year 2236 (1900).djvu/26

14 other fields of acquisition, and plunged further and further into the depths of space, some even trying, in the pride of their power and their thirst for science, to seek God on His throne in those unknown regions. Dim accounts had been handed down from generation to generation of a certain great man named Napoleon Bonaparte who once nearly conquered the world. Now there were thousands of Bonapartes endowed with colossal intellect, vast energy, and boundless ambition, each burning to wrest for himself a world from the great Unknown. Provinces and countries were not even thought of; they desired to rule over a planet, a system, a universe. There was present everywhere an intense fever for acquisition; men burned with a desire to plunder in these new regions. Vast expeditions were fitted out and started off for the regions of space. Many of these were never heard of again, but some came back with wonderful tales of what they had seen and found.