In the preceding chapters we have seen with what rapid strides the Spaniards advanced in the discovery and conquest of the New World. It was no sooner demonstrated that a voyage of a month or six weeks across the Atlantic Ocean conducted to fertile countries of indefinite extent, than all the difficulties of the navigation seemed suddenly to vanish, and numbers were found ready to trust their lives and fortunes to the sea, at a time when naval science was so imperfect that a very large proportion of those who ventured on long voyages were sure to perish. The grand motive of all this enterprise was, in the first instance, the famed wealth of India. The ardent wish to arrive at the seat of so much riches even swayed the judgment of Columbus, and concealed from him the true nature of his own discoveries. The Portuguese, in the mean time, had reached the long sought goal by the Cape of Good Hope, and followed up their success with an alacrity worthy of so glorious an achievement. The court of Portugal had long prided itself on the encouragement it gave to maritime enterprise; and when the object of its long continued exertions was at length attained, it proceeded to reap the fruit of its discoveries with the same vigour with which it had prosecuted them hitherto.

Russia, continually endeavouring to enlarge towards the east an empire already too extensive, pushed her discoveries on that side as far as the extreme frontier of Asia; and did not relinquish the hope of one day adding to her vast dominions in the old world some portion of the new continent. Nor did these hopes appear destitute of foundation. Her Cossack emissaries could not in the end fail to reach America: for whether the two continents were united to the north and formed a continued land, or were separated by a strait, no obstacles could be imagined capable of forming an insuperable barrier to the progress of these hardy and intrepid adventurers.

Yet it could not be expected that hunters wholly unacquainted with the art of navigation, and who only tempted fortune at sea, from time to time, merely for the purpose of hunting on the islands near the coast of Kamtschatka, would be able to procure such intelligence as should leave no doubt respecting the relative situation of Asia and America. An ignorant hunter might easily land on the latter continent, and, finding there the same animals and productions as on the opposite shores of Asia and the intermediate islands, might return without being aware of his discovery. No certain information could be obtained in this respect but by a concerted expedition, entrusted to the direction of an experienced seaman.

The nations of the North, however rude and barbarous they might appear in the eyes of the luxurious Romans, were yet raised far above the abject condition of an utter indifference to knowledge. The kindred races of the German and Sclavonian nations were very extensively diffused: their free polity and restless disposition maintained a perpetual intercourse between them; and even the nature of the country which they occupied seems to warrant the conclusion, that the geographical knowledge possessed by the northern nations was never circumscribed within such narrow limits as those which confined the views of the early inhabitants of Greece and Italy.

In all the accounts that remain to us of Scandinavia, from the age of Pytheas to that of Alfred, we meet with none but Gothic names. Again, the Scandinavian mythology preserved in the Edda presents only those physical traits which properly belong to northern climates, and those usages which are found only among a warlike and a maritime people. Thus, a northern god invents the art of skating, and the mortal remains of a deified hero are consumed on a vessel launched out to sea. Even in Valhalla, the clashing of arms is heard amid the festivities, and mead takes the place of nectar at the table of Odin. All these circumstances, poetical, geographical, and mythological, combine to prove that from the remotest times Scandinavia, properly so called, has been in the occupation of a single people.

The trade of the Phoenicians necessarily brought them soon into correspondence with the Greeks who were scattered over the islands and the shores of the Ægean. Their manufactured merchandize, which awakened the admiration of a rude people, was bartered for the natural productions of the land, and, perhaps, more frequently for slaves. Thus the prophet Ezekiel mentions the blue and purple from the isles of Elisha; and at the same time he says, “Javan, Tubal, and Meshech were thy merchants: they traded the persons of men and vessels of brass in thy market.” The nature of the motives which actuated the Greeks in their earliest naval enterprises is sufficiently manifest from the first paragraph of Herodotus, who ascribes the origin of the wars between the Greeks and barbarians to a series of piratical abductions. Io, daughter of the king of Argus, was carried away by the Phoenicians. Europa was then taken off from Tyre by the Cretans: Jason eloped with Medea; and when her father, the king of Colchis, demanded compensation, it was refused, says the historian, because the complaints of Inachus, the father of Io, had been neglected by her ravishers. Then followed reprisals and the rape of Helen.

War is the only art exercised by fierce and uncivilized nations, and captives are their only merchandize. The Phoenicians, no doubt, fomented the feuds by which their markets were supplied: the morality of their dealings sunk to the level of their iniquitous traffic.