The Magellanic Diaries 7

Exploration: Route 66 and the American Mythos

Route 66: Mojave Desert. Photo Credit: Julia Dean

In writing about Henry the Navigator in my last diary entry, I was preparing to write about a broader swath of explorers, names that may sound vaguely familiar from elementary school lessons, as Magellan’s did. There are stories to be told about those precursors and contemporaries of Magellan. The broadest of those stories is the story, of how we romanticize these great figures of exploration, in an image perhaps drawn from dramatic tales of the British Royal Geographical Society, of men who braved the Polar caps or the Amazon jungle in order to extend human knowledge and just, you know, do it. That the European explorers of the “Age of Discovery” were intrepid men of astonishing capacity to brave constant danger and bear, for us today, almost inconceivable physical hardships, often for years at a time – their crews too – is undeniable. But the careers of these explorers are best understood, in their world-historical significance, come …