History of the United Netherlands, 1598-99 | Page 2

against the nefarious traffic
which the Dutch republic persisted in carrying on with the common
enemy. But it is very certain that although the Spanish armadas would
have found it comparatively difficult to equip themselves without the
tar and the timber, the cordage, the stores, and the biscuits furnished by
the Hollanders, the rebellious commonwealth, if excluded from the
world's commerce, in which it had learned to play so controlling a part,
must have ceased to exist. For without foreign navigation the
independent republic was an inconceivable idea. Not only would it
have been incapable of continuing the struggle with the greatest
monarch in the world, but it might as well have buried itself once and
for ever beneath the waves from which it had scarcely emerged.
Commerce and Holland were simply synonymous terms. Its morsel of
territory was but the wharf to which the republic was occasionally
moored; its home was in every ocean and over all the world. Nowhere
had there ever existed before so large a proportion of population that
was essentially maritime. They were born sailors--men and women
alike--and numerous were the children who had never set foot on the
shore. At the period now treated of the republic had three times as
many ships and sailors as any one nation in the world. Compared with
modern times, and especially with the gigantic commercial strides of
the two great Anglo-Saxon families, the statistics both of population
and of maritime commerce in that famous and most vigorous epoch
would seem sufficiently meagre. Yet there is no doubt that in the
relative estimate of forces then in activity it would be difficult to
exaggerate the naval power of the young commonwealth. When
therefore, towards the close of Philip II.'s reign, it became necessary to
renounce the carrying trade with Spain and Portugal, by which the
communication with India and China was effected, or else to submit to
the confiscation of Dutch ships in Spanish ports, and the confinement
of Dutch sailors in the dungeons of the Inquisition, a more serious
dilemma was presented to the statesmen of the Netherlands than they
had ever been called upon to solve.
For the splendid fiction of the Spanish lake was still a formidable fact.
Not only were the Portuguese and Spaniards almost the only direct

traders to the distant East, but even had no obstacles been interposed by
Government, the exclusive possession of information as to the course
of trade, the pre-eminent practical knowledge acquired by long
experience of that dangerous highway around the world at a time when
oceanic navigation was still in its infancy, would have given a
monopoly of the traffic to the descendants of the bold discoverers who
first opened the great path to the world's commerce.
The Hollanders as a nation had never been engaged in the direct trade
around the Cape of Good Hope. Fortunately however at this crisis in
their commercial destiny there was a single Hollander who had
thoroughly learned the lesson which it was so necessary that all his
countrymen should now be taught. Few men of that period deserve a
more kindly and more honourable remembrance by posterity for their
contributions to science and the progress of civilization than John
Huygen van Linschoten, son of a plain burgher of West Friesland.
Having always felt a strong impulse to study foreign history and distant
nations and customs; he resolved at the early age of seventeen "to
absent himself from his fatherland, and from the conversation of friends
and relatives," in order to gratify this inclination for self-improvement.
After a residence of two years in Lisbon he departed for India in the
suite of the Archbishop of Goa, and remained in the East for nearly
thirteen years. Diligently examining all the strange phenomena which
came under his observation and patiently recording the results of his
researches day by day and year by year, he amassed a fund of
information which he modestly intended for the entertainment of his
friends when he should return to his native country. It was his wish that
"without stirring from their firesides or counting- houses" they might
participate with him in the gratification and instruction to be derived
fiom looking upon a world then so strange, and for Europeans still so
new. He described the manners and customs, the laws, the religions, the
social and political institutions, of the ancient races who dwelt in either
peninsula of India. He studied the natural history, the botany, the
geography of all the regions which he visited. Especially the products
which formed the material of a great traffic; the system of culture, the
means of transportation, and the course of commerce, were examined
by him with minuteness, accuracy, and breadth of vision. He was
neither a trader nor a sailor, but a