115 
has justly been regarded as a very sur¬ 
prising phenomenon. It is not a large 
bird, and its colour varies with the sea¬ 
son of the year. 
Some short account of the discovery of 
Spitzbergen is all that now remains for 
us to treat of regarding it. 
The progress of discovery towards the 
North has been extremely slow. The 
ancients possessed no accurate know¬ 
ledge of the countries north of the Rhine, 
though they made voyages a consider¬ 
able way beyond that barrier. The ac¬ 
counts of the Hyperborei, as given by 
Pomponius Mela and Pliny, two geogra¬ 
phical writers of great reputation, are 
perfectly fabulous, and afford an incon¬ 
trovertible proof of the total ignorance 
they were in respecting the country they 
pretended to describe. During the long 
period of the decline and fall of the Ro¬ 
man empire, the desire of discovering 
foreign countries, like other liberal pur- 
