History of the United Netherlands, 1598-99 | Page 4

of his cloth. In an
age and a country which had not yet thoroughly learned the lesson
taught by hundreds of thousands of murders committed by an orthodox
church, he was one of those who considered the substitution of a new
dogma and a new hierarchy, a new orthodoxy and a new church, in

place of the old ones, a satisfactory result for fifty, years of perpetual
bloodshed. Nether Torquemada nor Peter Titelmann could have more
thoroughly abhorred a Jew or a Calvinist than Peter Plancius detested a
Lutheran, or any other of the unclean tribe of remonstranta. That the
intolerance of himself and his comrades was confined to fiery words,
and was not manifested in the actual burning alive of the heterodox,
was a mark of the advance made by the mass of mankind in despite of
bigotry. It was at any rate a solace to those who believed in human
progress; even in matters of conscience, that no other ecclesiastical
establishment was ever likely to imitate the matchless machinery for
the extermination of heretical vermin which the Church of Rome had
found in the Spanish Inquisition. The blasts of denunciation from the
pulpit of Plancius have long since mingled with empty air and been
forgotten, but his services in the cause of nautical enterprise and
geographical science, which formed, as it were, a relaxation to what he
deemed the more serious pursuits of theology, will endear his name for
ever to the lovers of civilization.
Plancius and Dr. Francis Maalzoon--the enlightened pensionary of
Enkhuizen--had studied long and earnestly the history and aspects of
the oceanic trade, which had been unfolding itself then for a whole
century, but was still comparatively new, while Barneveld, ever ready
to assist in the advancement of science, and to foster that commerce
which was the life of the commonwealth, was most favourably
disposed towards projects of maritime exploration. For hitherto,
although the Hollanders had been among the hardiest and the foremost
in the art of navigation they had contributed but little to actual
discovery. A Genoese had led the way to America, while one
Portuguese mariner had been the first to double the southern cape of
Africa, and another, at the opposite side of the world, had opened what
was then supposed the only passage through the vast continent which,
according to ideas then prevalent, extended from the Southern Pole to
Greenland, and from Java to Patagonia. But it was easier to follow in
the wake of Columbus, Gama, or Magellan, than to strike out new
pathways by the aid of scientific deduction and audacious enterprise. At
a not distant day many errors, disseminated by the boldest of
Portuguese navigators, were to be corrected by the splendid discoveries
of sailors sent forth by the Dutch republic, and a rich harvest in

consequence was to be reaped both by science and commerce. It is true,
too, that the Netherlanders claimed to have led the way to the great
voyages of Columbus by their discovery of the Azores. Joshua van den
Berg, a merchant of Bruges, it was vigorously maintained, had landed
in that archipelago in the year 1445. He had found there, however, no
vestiges of the human race, save that upon the principal island, in the
midst of the solitude, was seen--so ran the tale--a colossal statue of a
man on horseback, wrapped in a cloak, holding the reins of his steed in
his left hand, and solemnly extending his right arm to the west. This
gigantic and solitary apparition on a rock in the ocean was supposed to
indicate the existence of a new world, and the direction in which it was
to be sought, but it is probable that the shipwrecked Fleeting was quite
innocent of any such magnificent visions. The original designation of
the Flemish Islands, derived from their first colonization by
Netherlanders, was changed to Azores by Portuguese mariners, amazed
at the myriads of hawks which they found there. But if the
Netherlanders had never been able to make higher claims as
discoverers than the accidental and dubious landing upon an unknown
shore of a tempest-tost mariner, their position in the records of
geographical exploration would not be so eminent as it certainly is.
Meantime the eyes of Linschoten, Plancius, Maalzoon, Barneveld, and
of many other ardent philosophers and patriots, were turned anxiously
towards the regions of the North Pole. Two centuries later--and still
more recently in our own day and generation--what heart has not
thrilled with sympathy and with pride at the story of the magnificent
exploits, the heroism, the contempt of danger and of suffering which
have characterized the great navigators whose names are so familiar to
the world; especially the arctic explorers of England and of our own
country? The true chivalry of an advanced epoch--recognizing that
there