OF ALL COUNTRIES. 491 



followed upon the revelations made by Columbus at the 

 close of the fifteenth century, renewing in a more civilised 

 form the daring of the ancient Vikings, commenced also 

 a new and energetic era in the history of fisheries and 

 fishermen. Coast and river no longer sufficed for the 

 restless spirits of that adventurous age, and the Atlantic 

 and Arctic Oceans became the resort of the daring fisher- 

 man. As far back as the fifteenth century England enjoyed 

 piscatorial rights in the seas of Iceland, and we learn from 

 a reply, preserved in one of the Cotton MS., to a remon- 

 strance addressed a hundred years later by the Danish 

 Ambassador to the Government of England, that three 

 sorts of localities alone were excepted : those which were 

 reserved for the King, those which were private property, 

 and those which were the subject of special grant. During 

 a long period, however, the Flemings held pre-eminence 

 upon the seas, but the persecution of the Duke of Alva 

 gradually weakened the industries and drove citizens and 

 commerce alike into foreign countries, until the victory of 

 the Duke of Parma gave a finishing blow to their pros- 

 perity. Manufactures migrated to England, fish-curing 

 and navigation to Holland, and the traditional contest 

 between the Dutch broom and the British whip was the 

 result. 



Two years before the close of the same century a British 

 vessel, with that spirit of mingled business and romance 

 specially characteristic of the time, though even yet not 

 wholly extinct, went sailing further and further from home 

 towards what is now known as the Greenland coast, in 

 search, like princes in a fairy tale, of whatever adventures 

 might happen to befall them, when they came suddenly 

 upon a veritable enchanted ground in the shape of a region 

 frequented by schools of whales. This was, indeed, an 



