A comparison with other European nations will more clearly show how great an influence the climate of the North, and especially the Northern Sea, must have had on the development of navigation among the Danes and Norwegians, and on their whole maritime life. With the exception of England, which, in a still higher degree than Scandinavia, swims in the open sea, and of Holland, which lies as it were half under water, no country in Europe has produced a seafaring people which can be at all compared to the Northmen; and this notwithstanding that Germany, France, and the Spanish Peninsula, have all a very considerable extent of coast. The reason undoubtedly is, that the coasts of those countries are washed by enclosed seas, which naturally cannot be compared with the ocean; whilst the countries themselves, especially Germany and France—and the latter even in spite of its extent of coast towards the Atlantic—have an unmistakeable continental character. It is clear, moreover, that the ocean, as well as the smaller and enclosed seas, have, according to the difference of latitude, an entirely different influence on the people who inhabit their shores. The Mediterranean, surrounded by rich and fruitful, but enervating, countries, has not shown itself capable of producing such seamen as the Baltic, where the climate is more severe, and the gifts of Nature incomparably more sparing. Spain and Portugal, it is true, have a great extent of coast towards the Atlantic, which may almost be compared with the west coast of Norway. But both those countries possess a fruitful soil and a glorious southern climate. Their inhabitants were not, like the Northmen of old, forced to visit foreign shores in order to procure subsistence, and to struggle continually with a raw and severe climate. They preferred to stay at home and enjoy the blessings of their own country; and thus the calm energy and the proud self-reliance which are engendered by a ceaseless struggle with an ungrateful soil and climate, and which are indispensable to a hardy seaman, were not developed in them as in the Norwegians and other inhabitants of the North. This may have been one of the causes why the Spaniards and Portuguese were unable to retain, in later times, their mastery over the new world. They were displaced by the English, a northern seafaring people, who were more at home on the sea.