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 Rh have hitherto been treating for the last three chapters. His explorations were undertaken mainly for scientific purposes, and to solve a scientific problem, whereas all the other researches of Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Dutch were directed to one end, that of reaching the Spice Islands and Cathay. The Portuguese at first started out on the search by the slow method of creeping down the coast of Africa; the Spanish, by adopting Columbus's bold idea, had attempted it by the western route, and under Magellan's still bolder conception had equally succeeded in reaching it in that way; the English and French sought for a north-west passage to the Moluccas; while the English and Dutch attempted a north-easterly route. In both directions the icy barrier of the north prevented success. It was reserved, as we shall see, for the present century to complete the North-West Passage under Maclure, and the North-East by Nordenskiold, sailing with quite different motives to those which first brought the mariners of England, France and Holland within the Arctic Circle.

The net result of all these attempts by the nations of Europe to wrest from the Venetians the monopoly of the Eastern trade was to add to geography the knowledge of the existence of a New World intervening between the western shores of Europe and the eastern shores of Asia. We have yet to learn the means by which the New World thus discovered became explored and possessed by the European nations.

[Authorities: Cooley and Beazeley, John and Sebastian Cabot, 1898.]