Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/12

Rh Nor did God’s command apply to this portion or that only, or merely to lands where nature smiles in loveliness; nor yet to the forest primeval, the cloud-capped  hills, the far-stretching plains, or the regions of eternal  ice and snow; but to the whole earth in its completeness. This should be man’s mission. So long as one spot of this huge globe remains to be subdued, man, the  conqueror, must go forth to battle, and unfurl in every  clime the standard of civilization and Christianity, in  obedience to the Divine command. Such, at least, is my unlearned interpretation of the Bible language.

I confess myself anxious to inspire you, my dear friend, with some little enthusiasm in the cause of geographical science. You cannot, like Mahomet, go to the mountain, and so the mountain must be made to  come to you. We cannot all be sailors and travelers, and visit foreign lands; and so I  intend that some of  these strange places — the sunny islands of the Pacific  and the frozen regions of the Antarctic — shall visit you. As you peruse these pages I trust that they will awaken in your heart an endearing love for the sublime and  beautiful in God’s wonderful creation, and that they  will bring you into earnest sympathy with those fearless  pioneers of civilization who go forth in contempt of  danger and death, to add to the sum of man’s knowledge  of the world, to widen the boundaries of civilized existence, and to obey the first and last command of  Almighty God, who has decreed that this earth shall be  subdued, and the Gospel preached to every creature.

I have refreshed my memory by reading the history