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.].