Which cannot in their huge and proper life
Be here presented.
So the scenery must be shifted.
PART II
THE UNVISITED NORTH
" ... a few days earlier I had read certain News-Sheets printed here in Venice by these good fathers [the Jesuits], relating their progress in Muscovy, the conversion of a King in Africa, and so on. I said to myself, all right about Muscovy, it's a cold Country, far away, few go there—and few return...."
Sir Henry Wotton,[56] 1606.
Andrew Boorde has something to say about Iceland in his guide to Europe. He puts into the mouth of a native the words,—
"I am an Icelander, as brute as a beast,
When I eat candle ends, I am at a feast."
And that is all they knew about Iceland. As a country with a political history and a literature it was no more present in their minds than as a holiday resort. Nor were any of the countries that bordered the Baltic, except on the South. But Danzig alone was enough to keep the Baltic a busy sea, and consequently Denmark was not as much ignored as would otherwise have happened; for both sides of the entrance to the Baltic belonged to the King of Denmark, whose extortions in the way of tolls kept his name before the public.