History of the United Netherlands, 1598-99 | Page 6

assist their votaries along the dangerous path of discovery.
The small yet unwieldy, awkward, and, to the modern mind, most
grotesque vessels in which such audacious deeds were performed in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries awaken perpetual astonishment. A
ship of a hundred tons burden, built up like a tower, both at stem and
stern, and presenting in its broad bulbous prow, its width of beam in
proportion to its length, its depression amidships, and in other sins
against symmetry, as much opposition to progress over the waves as
could well be imagined, was the vehicle in which those indomitable
Dutchmen circumnavigated the globe and confronted the arctic terrors
of either pole. An astrolabe-- such as Martin Beheim had invented for
the Portuguese, a clumsy astronomical ring of three feet in

circumference--was still the chief machine used for ascertaining the
latitude, and on shipboard a most defective one. There were no
logarithms, no means of determining at sea the variations of the
magnetic needle, no system of dead reckoning by throwing the log and
chronicling the courses traversed. The firearms with which the sailors
were to do battle with the unknown enemies that might beset their path
were rude and clumsy to handle. The art of compressing and
condensing provisions was unknown. They had no tea nor coffee to
refresh the nervous system in its terrible trials; but there was one
deficiency which perhaps supplied the place of many positive luxuries.
Those Hollanders drank no ardent spirits. They had beer and wine in
reasonable quantities, but no mention is ever made in the journals of
their famous voyages of any more potent liquor; and to this
circumstance doubtless the absence of mutinous or disorderly
demonstrations, under the most trying circumstances, may in a great
degree be attributed.
Thus, these navigators were but slenderly provided with the appliances
with which hazardous voyages have been smoothed by modern art; but
they had iron hearts, faith in themselves, in their commanders, in their
republic, and in the Omnipotent; perfect discipline and unbroken
cheerfulness amid toil, suffering, and danger. No chapter of history
utters a more beautiful homily an devotion to duty as the true guiding
principle of human conduct than the artless narratives which have been
preserved of many of these maritime enterprises. It is for these noble
lessons that they deserve to be kept in perpetual memory.
And in no individual of that day were those excellent qualities more
thoroughly embodied than in William Barendz, pilot and burgher of
Amsterdam. It was partly under his charge that the first little expedition
set forth on the 5th of June, 1594, towards those unknown arctic seas,
which no keel from Christendom had ever ploughed, and to those
fabulous regions where the foot of civilized men had never trod.
Maalzoon, Plancius, and Balthaser Moucheron, merchant of
Middelburg, were the chief directors of the enterprise; but there was a
difference of opinion between them.
The pensionary was firm in the faith that the true path to China would
be found by steering through the passage which was known to exist
between the land of Nova Zembla and the northern coasts of Muscovy,

inhabited by the savage tribes called Samoyedes. It was believed that,
after passing those straits, the shores of the great continent would be
found to trend in a south-easterly direction, and that along that coast it
would accordingly be easy to make the desired voyage to the eastern
ports of China. Plancius, on the contrary, indicated as the most
promising passage the outside course, between the northern coast of
Nova Zembla and the pole. Three ships and a fishing yacht were
provided by the cities of Enkhuizen, Amsterdam, and by the province
of Zeeland respectively. Linschoten was principal commissioner on
board the Enkhuizen vessel, having with him an experienced mariner,
Brandt Ijsbrantz by name, as skipper. Barendz, with the Amsterdam
ship and the yacht, soon parted company with the others, and steered,
according to the counsels of Plancius and his own convictions; for the
open seas of the north. And in that memorable summer, for the first
time in the world's history, the whole desolate region of Nova Zembla
was visited, investigated, and thoroughly mapped out. Barendz sailed
as far as latitude 77 deg. and to the extreme north-eastern point of the
island. In a tremendous storm off a cape, which he ironically christened
Consolationhook (Troost-hoek), his ship, drifting under bare poles
amid ice and mist and tempest, was nearly dashed to pieces; but he
reached at last the cluster of barren islets beyond the utmost verge of
Nova Zembla, to which he hastened to affix the cherished appellation
of Orange. This, however, was the limit of his voyage. His ship was
ill-provisioned, and the weather had been severe beyond expectation.
He turned back on the