84 HISTOK Y THE SEA. 



End, Cantium Cape Pepperness, and Ocas Duncansby Head. 

 He found the inhabitants of the southern coast industrious and 

 sociable, peaceable, honest, and sober. They raised wheat and 

 worked rich mines of tin. As he sailed northward, along the 

 eastern coast, he noticed that the days grew sensibly longer : 

 and at Point Orcas, nineteen hours elapsed between the rising and 

 the setting of the sun. He sailed still northward, and six days 

 after leaving Orcas he came to an island, or a continent, — he 

 knew not which, — which he called Thule. As he found he could 

 go no farther to the north, he spoke of this spot as Ultima 

 Thule, an expression which has passed into the figurative lan- 

 guage of all modern nations as one denoting any remote point. 

 Thule is generally considered to have been Shetland, although 

 theories have been ardently advocated making it respectively 

 Iceland, Sweden, and Jutland. 



The narrative of Pytheas, which has been thus far clear and 

 reliable, assumes at this point a very fabulous aspect. He 

 declares that north of Thule there was neither earth, nor 

 sea, nor air. A sort of dense concretion of all the elements 

 occupied space and enveloped the world. He compared it to 

 the thick, viscid animal substance called pulmo marinus, a sort 

 of mollusk or medusa. He said that this substance was the 

 basis of the universe, and that in it earth, air, and sky hung, as 

 it were, suspended. This illusion has been explained by the 

 dreary spectacle of fogs, mists, rains, and tempests which at 

 this point of his voyage must have met the gaze of the daring 

 navigator. It would have been difficult for any mind, in those 

 early ages, to have been on its guard against the sinister 

 impressions likely to result from the contemplation of a scene 

 so appalling. It must be remembered that Pytheas was accus- 

 tomed to the pure and transparent atmosphere, the dazzling 

 sky, and the phosphorescent waters of the Mediterranean. It 

 would have been astonishing if a man educated among the 

 splendors of an almost tropical climate had not been oppressed 



