116 THE OCEAN. 
versed; that terrible “Cape of Storms,”* the south- 
ern point of Africa, was doubled; a new world was 
discovered in the western hemisphere; and commer- 
cial enteprise led the hardy sons of western Europe 
to dare even the icy horrors of the Poles. Of these 
the Biscayans seem to have been the first, for we 
find them engaged in the northern whale fishery as 
early as the year 1575. Before the end of the six- 
teenth century, the English had engaged in the same 
enterprise, fishing first on the coast of North Ame- 
rica, and after a while in the vicinity of Spitzbergen. 
The Dutch soon followed, and other nations were not 
slow in prosecuting the same lucrative employment. 
Nature in these regions wears an aspect of awful 
majesty and grandeur, unrelieved by the softer and 
gentler beauties which distinguish her in the south. 
In the islands of these seas no meadows smile 
in emerald verdure, no waving corn-fields gladden 
the heart of man with their golden undulations; 
no songs of jocund birds usher in the morning, 
nor is the evening soothed with the indefinable 
murmur of myriads of humming insects. All is 
dreary solitude; and the death-like silence that 
pervades the scene, inspires a feeling of involun- 
tary awe, as if the hardy explorer had intruded 
into a region where he ought not to be. The 
most northern land known to exist is that of the 
islands of Spitzbergen, the extreme point of which 
approaches to within ten degrees of the Pole. The 
* This was the name given to the extreme point of Africa by its dis- 
eoverer, Bartholomew Diaz: but, on his return to Portugal, King John 
II. considered the discovery so auspicious, that he changed the name to 
“The Cape of Good Hope,” which it still rotains. 
