Hendrik Willem Van Loon

“ Whosoever could beg, borrow, or steal a few thousand guilders; whoever possessed an old scow which could perhaps be made to float, whoever was related to a man who had a cousin who had some influence on the exchange, suddenly became an Indian trader, equipped a ship, hired sailors, had mysterious conferences with nautical gentlemen who talked about their great experience in foreign waters, and then waited for the early days of spring to bid God-speed to his little expedition. Every city must have its own Indian fleet. ”

“ A week of rest and decent food was enough to cure all the men, and then they sailed for home. But so great was the hurry of this rich squadron to reach the markets of Amsterdam that Van Neck's ship was almost destroyed when it hoisted too many sails and when the wind broke two of the masts. It was not easy to repair this damage in the open sea. After several days some sort of jury rig was equipped. The big ship, with its short stubby mast, then looked so queer that several Dutch vessels which saw it appear upon the horizon off the Gulf of Biscay beat a hasty retreat. ”

“ Amsterdam, the capital of the new Dutch commonwealth, the rich city which alone counted more people within her wide walls than all of the country provinces put together, had ever been the leader in all matters which offered the chance of an honest penny. ”

“ There had been a war with some of the tribes from the interior of the island. The villages along the coast had been burned, and all the cattle had been killed. Men and women were dying of starvation. Right in the midst of the lovely tropical scenery there lay the decaying corpses of the natives, a prey to vultures and jackals. The expedition of Van Neck, however, had been sent out to buy spices in India and not to reform the heathen inhabitants of African islands. The water-tanks were hastily filled, and on the sixteenth of September the island was left to its own fate. ”

“ If we are to believe Portuguese tradition, St. Helena, where the ship passed a week of the month of May of the year 1589, was placed in its exact geographical position by the Almighty to serve His faithful children as a welcome resting-point upon their perilous voyage to the far Indies. The island was full of goats, wild pigs, chickens, partridges, and thousands of pigeons, all of which creatures allowed themselves to be killed with the utmost ease, and furnished food for generations of sailors who visited those shores. ”

“ Everywhere in the little terrestrial triangle of this newest of republics there was the activity of men who had just escaped destruction by the narrowest of margins. They had faith in their own destiny. Any one who can go through an open rebellion against the mightiest of monarchs and come out successfully deserves the commendation of the Almighty. The Hollanders had succeeded. Their harbors, the lungs of the country, were free once more, and could breathe the fresh air of the open sea and of commercial prosperity. ”

“ For centuries a steady stream of bullion flowed into Spanish coffers. Alas! it flowed out of them just as rapidly; for Spain, with all its foreign glory, was miserably poor at home. Her people had never been taught to work. The soil did not provide food enough for the population of the large peninsula. Every biscuit, so to speak, every loaf of bread, had to be imported from abroad. Unfortunately, the grain business was in the hands of these same Dutch Calvinists whose nasal theology greatly offended his Majesty King Philip. ”

“ He was born on the island of Terschelling and had been familiar with winds and tides since early childhood. Barendsz had two Northern expeditions to his credit, and had seen as much of the coast of Siberia as anybody in the country. A man of great resource and personal courage, combined with a weird ability to guess his approximate whereabouts, he guided the expedition safely through its worst perils. He died in a small open boat in the Arctic Sea. Without his devoted services none of the men who were with him would ever have seen his country again. ”

“ The Middle Ages, both late and early, dearly loved monopoly. Indeed, the entire period between the days of the old Roman Empire and the latter part of the eighteenth century, when the French Revolution destroyed the old system, was a time of monopolies or of quarrels about, and for, monopolies. The Dutch traders wondered whether they could not obtain a little private route to India, something that should be Dutch all along the line, and could be closed at will to all outsiders. ”

“ The adventures of men who set out to perform the work of pioneers, the career of navigators who had convinced themselves that here or there a new continent or an undiscovered cape or a forgotten island awaited their curious eyes, and who then risked their fortunes [Pg 327] and their lives to realize their dreams; in one word, the men of constructive vision who are of greater value to their world than any others because they show the human race the road of the future. ”

“ From that moment Van Noort's voyage and his ships in the Pacific were as safe as a man smoking a pipe in a powder-magazine. They might be destroyed at any moment. As a best means of defense, the Hollanders decided to make a great show of strength. They did not wait for the assistance of the Henrick Frederick, but sailed at once to Valparaiso, took several Spanish ships anchored in the roads, and burned all of the others except one, which was added to the Dutch fleet. From the captain of the Buen Jesus Van Noort had heard that a number of Hollanders were imprisoned in the castle of Valparaiso. ”

“ No further sea-gulls came to feed this forlorn expedition, but just when they were so hungry that they could not stand it any longer, large shoals of flying-fish suddenly jumped out of the water into the boats. Again the men were saved. The two little barrels of water had been emptied by this time. For the second time the men expected that they would all perish. They sailed eastward, but they saw no land, and finally they got so hungry and thirsty that they talked about killing the cabin boy and eating him. ”

“ Iceland and Norway is deepest. The White Sea was fairly well known, and Dutch traders had found their way to the Russian port of Archangel. What lay beyond the White Sea was a matter of conjecture. Whether the Caspian Sea, like the White Sea, was part of the Arctic Sea or part of the Indian Ocean no one knew. But it appeared that farther to the north, several days beyond the North Cape, there was a narrow strait between an island which the Russians called the New Island (Nova Zembla) and the continent of Asia. This might prove to be a shorter and less dangerous route to China and the Indies. ”

“ It was a very dangerous sea to navigate. The Pacific Ocean is full of reefs. These reefs now appear upon the map, but even in this day of scientific navigation they wreck many a ship. On the nineteenth of April one of Roggeveen's ships ran upon such a hidden reef in the middle of the night. The crew was saved, and was divided among the other two vessels. The ship, however, was a total loss. Nothing could be saved of the personal belongings of the men and the provisions. It is a curious fact that the South Sea islands always have had a wonderful fascination for a certain kind of temperament. ”

“ On the twenty-first of May the Santa Maria continued her northward course. Again bad food and bad water caused illness among the men. A score of them died. Often they hid themselves somewhere in the hold, and had been dead for several days before they made their presence noticeable. It was miserable business; and now, with a ship of sick and disabled men, the Santa Maria was doomed to fall in with three small British vessels. At once there was a panic among the Portuguese sailors. The British hoisted their pennant, and opened with a salvo of guns. ”

“ Seven men were left on Spitzbergen and seven others on the Jan Mayen, an island somewhat to the west and farther away from the pole. The seven on Jan Mayen all died of scurvy. When next spring a fleet came to relieve them they were found frozen dead in their bunks. On Spitzbergen, however, all the men had passed a comfortable winter. They had suffered a good deal from the cold, but they had managed to keep out in the open, take a lot of exercise, and pass the long winter as cheerfully as the heavy blizzards and storms allowed. It was decided to leave a small guard upon the island every year. ”

“ The joy of the men did not last very long. The next day there was no wind at all, and once more the fleet anchored. To keep his few remaining men busy, the commander arranged an expedition on shore. It was the first time that a Dutch fleet had been in this part of the world, and the event must be properly celebrated. A high pole was planted in a conspicuous spot on shore, and the adventures of the expedition and the names of the leaders were carved on the pole. Near this pole a small cemetery was made where two sailors who had died the night before were buried. ”

“ Van Noort, with his little ships, [Pg 208] knew that he had to depend upon his own energy and resourcefulness; but the captains of the five ships which left Rotterdam on the twenty-seventh of July, 1598, with almost five hundred men were under the impression that half of the work had been done at home by the owners. Perhaps, too, there is such a thing as luck in navigating the high seas. One fleet sails for the Indies and has good weather all the way across the ocean. When the wind blows hard it blows from the right direction. ”

“ In a general way our meager information about the invested capital, the strange stories of the early lives of the commanders, and the very rough character of the crew show that we have to do with one of the many mushroom companies, an enterprise which was not based upon very sound principles, but was of a purely speculative nature. During the earliest days of Indian trading, however, all good merchants were in such a hurry to make money to get to Java long before anybody else and to reach home ahead of all competitors that there was no time for the promoting of absolutely sound companies. ”

“ There was a private enterprise of the city of Rotterdam. To be honest, there were too many companies for the small size of the country. Before another dozen years had passed they were all amalgamated into one strong commercial body, the great Dutch East India Company, but during the first years hundreds of ships stampeded to the promised land of Java and Bali and the Moluccas, and for one fleet of small vessels which came home with a profit there were a dozen which either were shipwrecked on the way or which had ruined their shareholders before they had passed the equator. ”

“ As an Indian trader he would not have been a great success. The old irresponsible buccaneering days of that trade were gone forever. The difficult art of founding a commercial empire by persuasion rather than by force was put into the hands of men who were not only brave, but also tactful. ”

“ He made a detailed investigation of the northern coast of the real Australian continent. He sailed into the Gulf of Carpentaria. He found the Torres Strait, which he supposed to be a bay between New Guinea and Australia,—for the report of the Torres discovery in 1607 was as yet in the dusty archives of Manila, and had not been given to the world,—and once more he returned by way of the western coast of New Guinea to inform the governor-general that whatever continent he had found produced [Pg 320] nothing which could be of any material profit to the Dutch East India Company. ”

“ The Dutch merchants still found themselves in a very difficult position. They had to enter this field of activity when their predecessors had been at work for almost two centuries. These predecessors, judging by outward evidences, were fast losing both ability and energy. But prestige before an old and well-established name [Pg 32] is a strong influence in the calculations of men. Those who directed the new Dutch Republic did not lack courage. All the same, they shrank from open and direct competition with the mighty Spanish Empire. ”

“ The Liefde was obliged to make the voyage to Japan alone. On the twenty-fourth of March of the year 1600 the first Japanese island was reached.
The people of Japan were very kind-hearted and very obliging. The sick Hollanders were allowed to come on shore, and the others could [Pg 244] trade as much as they liked. But Japan for many years had been a field of successful activities for Portuguese Jesuits. These Jesuits smiled pleasantly upon the Dutch visitors, but to the Japanese they hinted that the Hollanders were pirates and could not be trusted. ”