Some reference has already been made to the early knowledge of arctic lands acquired by Scandinavian seamen, who in the second half of the ninth century had carried not only their commercial explorations but also their actual rule round the North Cape and as far as the White Sea. At this period they also reached Iceland; but they had been preceded there by holy men from Ireland, as is stated by Dicuil about 825. In the tenth century Greenland became known to the Norwegians, and during its ninth decade Eric the Red visited the western coast of that land, and colonization and more or less regular intercommunication were carried on thereafter until the early part of the fifteenth century. In the year 1000 Leif Ericsson reached that part of the North American coast which he named Vinland. A second expedition under Thorfinn Karlsefne reached the same coast by way of Labrador and Newfoundland, but these discoveries were not followed up. In the northerly direction Spitsbergen was found by the close of the twelfth century, and, in the easterly, Novaya Zemlya a little later. We have already seen something of the effect which these discoveries had upon European geographical studies and cartography; and it has been pointed out that their effect is still more to be observed when, in that brilliant final decade of the fifteenth century which witnessed the triumphs of Columbus and Gama, John Cabot was despatched by a company of Bristol merchants across the Atlantic, and reached Cape Breton and Nova Scotia as some believe, or at least Newfoundland, for at Bristol many Scandinavian merchants were settled, and doubtless helped to inspire this and succeeding journeys. A second journey was made by Cabot in 1498, and in 1500 to 1501 a Portuguese, Gaspar Cortereal, visited eastern Greenland and Newfoundland, and these voyages had the incidental result of opening up the important Newfoundland fisheries. But the ultimate object of exploration in this direction, which now and for a long succeeding period possessed the minds of men, was to discover a north-west passage which was held to exist and to be feasible for commerce between Europe and the Indies; and we shall presently see that a similar north-east passage along the north coast of Europe itself and Asia to the same goal was no less eagerly sought after. Cortereal may have seen the opening of Hudson’s Strait, and, though he was lost on a second voyage (as was his brother who sought him), the possibility of finding a practicable north-west passage attracted the Portuguese as well as others, but only for a little while--their instincts like their interests led them southward, not northward.