6. When by his famous line of partition, Pope Alexander VI. granted to Spain and Portugal the new countries discovered in the East and West, the brigantines of these nations spread themselves over all seas in search of new lands and fresh glory. To the other maritime nations, to the English and the Dutch, nothing remained, if they meant to acquire gold-yielding lands, but to drive the Spaniards and Portuguese from their conquests, or to seek new Eldorados—yea, by the discovery of sea routes on the north of Asia and America, to aspire to India itself. This was the conception first entertained by both the English and the Dutch, and Geography at any rate profited by their delusions. These nations were not to blame if those routes, known afterwards as the _North-West_ and _North-East passages_, degenerated into chimeras, if passages had to be sought in higher and still higher latitudes,—ultimately in the ice itself, although the Dutch geographer, Plancius, struck out the consoling theory of the _open Polar Sea_. 7. But who in those days could presuppose that the continents of Asia and America, just where those passages were attempted, symmetrically developed the most enormous longitudinal dimensions? Even the actual discovery of the vast extent of Siberia exerted but little influence on the question of the North-East passage, for the achievements of individuals were not then so quickly disseminated as at present. A succession of men in vessels poorly equipped now struggled against the supremacy of the ice, avoiding at first the dreaded wintering, while they attempted sometimes the North-East, sometimes the North-West, sometimes the passage over the Pole itself. In these attempts many lost their lives; many returned, despairing of but still hoping for the solution of the problems—_but no one reached the goal_. 8. The amazing simplicity of the first adventurers is seen in Frobisher’s project to erect forts, duly provided with cannons and men, on the commanding points of the passage, in the letters of recommendation given by kings of England to the leaders of the expedition for the small Saracenic states which were supposed to exist beyond the river Obi; but these old navigators carried no letter of recommendation to the great potentate—the ice. Gold, too, they hoped to find in the North, because the book of Job speaks of gold coming from thence, and the North-East passage was considered as free from danger, because Pliny mentions some Indians who had been driven towards Norway! 9. When another century and a half had elapsed, a series of unsuccessful attempts to force the North-East passage put a decisive check to material interests in Polar expeditions. The North-East passage belonged henceforward to the history of the past. The English and Dutch withdrew from the Novaya Zemlya seas; and after Wood’s retreat no scientific expedition entered those seas for two hundred years, _until the days of the Austrian Expeditions_.