The progress of discovery towards the North has been extremely slow. The ancients possessed no accurate knowledge of the countries north of the Rhine, though they made voyages a considerable way beyond that barrier. The accounts of the Hyperborei, as given by Pomponius Mela and Pliny, two geographical writers of great reputation, are perfectly fabulous, and afford an incontrovertible proof of the total ignorance they were in respecting the country they pretended to describe. During the long period of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, the desire of discovering foreign countries, like other liberal pursuits, had totally subsided. In the fifteenth century, however, men awakened from their lethargy, and the voyages of _Columbus_ and _Vasco de Gama_ constitute one of the most important epochs in the history of the human race. The spirit of adventure was aroused, and voyagers boldly ventured into hitherto unexplored seas. The English and Dutch navigators of the sixteenth century, envying the glory and wealth acquired by the Portuguese in their voyages to India by the Cape of Good Hope, were seized with the same spirit of adventure, and were fired with the hopes of opening a new route to those regions, by sailing round the north of Europe and Asia. Though these expectations were disappointed, yet to this stimulus the great discoveries made in the North are to be principally ascribed. The honour of the discovery of Spitzbergen has been long contested between the English and the Dutch. The former claim it from Sir Hugh Willoughby’s pretended view of it in 1553; but the land seen by him being in latitude 72°, could not be any part of Spitzbergen, which extends no farther south than 76° 30´. Some writers have supposed, that if what Sir Hugh saw was not a fog bank, it must have been either the island of Jan Mayen, or some part of Greenland; while others allege, that it was either Nova Zembla, or the island of Kolgow. The English historians have likewise honoured Stephen Burrows with the title of second discoverer of this country in 1556, though he never advanced farther in these seas than the latitude of 70° 42´. The priority of this discovery indubitably belongs to the Dutch, who, under the pilotage of William Barentz, in 1596, not only discovered, but landed on some of the northernmost islands (in lat. 80°) by them named Spitzbergen, or Sharp Mountains. Barentz, as already observed, in the same voyage discovered Cherry Island, which was by him called Bear Island; but changed its appellation in 1603, when it was discovered by a ship belonging to Sir Francis Cherry of London. The English began the whale fishery at Spitzbergen immediately after its discovery by Barentz. The nation soon became sensible of the advantages to be derived from this trade, and Parliament gave premiums to the different adventurers. They had a formidable rival to contend with in the Dutch, who long were successful competitors with the English in this traffic[23].