Dutch also began to take active part in the naval
enterprise thus fostered, and the navy of France was created under the
auspices of Philip Augustus.

The result of all this was that there was a great moving, and, to some
extent, commingling of the nations. The knowledge of arts and
manufactures was interchanged, and of necessity the knowledge of various
languages spread. The West began constantly to demand the products of
the East, wealth began to increase, and the sum of human knowledge to
extend.

Shortly after this era of opening commercial prosperity in the
Mediterranean, the hardy Northmen performed deeds on the deep which
outrival those of the great Columbus himself, and were undertaken many
centuries before his day.

The Angles, the Saxons, and the Northmen inhabited the borders of the
Baltic, the shores of the German Ocean, and the coasts of Norway. Like
the nations on the shores of the Mediterranean, they too became famous
navigators; but, unlike them, war and piracy were their chief objects of
pursuit. Commerce was secondary.

In vessels resembling that of which the above is a representation, those
nations went forth to plunder the dwellers in more favoured climes, and
to establish the Anglo-Saxon dominion in England; and their celebrated
King Alfred became the founder of the naval power of Britain, which was
destined in future ages to rule the seas.

It was the Northmen who, in huge open boats, pushed off without chart or
compass (for neither existed at that time) into the tempestuous northern
seas, and, in the year 863, discovered the island of Iceland; in 983,
the coast of Greenland; and, a few years later, those parts of the
American coast now called Long Island, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Nova
Scotia, and Newfoundland. It is true they did not go forth with the
scientific and commercial views of Columbus; neither did they give to
the civilised world the benefit of their knowledge of those lands. But
although their purpose was simply selfish, we cannot withhold our
admiration of the bold, daring spirit displayed by those early
navigators, under circumstances of the greatest possible disadvantage--
with undecked or half-decked boats, meagre supplies, no scientific
knowledge or appliances, and the stars their only guide over the
trackless waste of waters.

In the course of time, one or two adventurous travellers pushed into
Asia, and men began to ascertain that the world was not the
insignifi