THE GOLDEN BOOK OF THE DUTCH NAVIGATORS BY HENDRIK WILLEM van LOON ILLUSTRATED WITH SEVENTY REPRODUCTIONS OF OLD PRINTS NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1916 Copyright, 1916, by The Century Co. Published, October, 1916 FOR HANSJE AND WILLEM This is a story of magnificent failures. The men who equipped the expeditions of which I shall tell you the story died in the poorhouse. The men who took part in these voyages sacrificed their lives as cheerfully as they lighted a new pipe or opened a fresh bottle. S

The history of America is the story of the conquest of the West. The history of Holland is the story of the conquest of the sea. The western frontier influenced American life, shaped American thought, and gave America the habits of self-reliance and independence of action which differentiate the people of the great republic from those of other countries. The wide ocean, the wind-swept highroad of commerce, turned a small mud-bank along the North Sea into a mighty commonwealth and created a civil

It was the year of our Lord 1579, and the eleventh of the glorious revolution of Holland against Spain. Brielle had been taken by a handful of hungry sea-beggars. Haarlem and Naarden had been murdered out by a horde of infuriated Spanish regulars. Alkmaar—little Alkmaar, hidden behind lakes, canals, open fields with low willows and marshes—had been besieged, had turned the welcome waters of the Zuyder Zee upon the enemy, and had driven the enemy away. Alva, the man of iron who was to destroy thi

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. Her intellectual glory was a reflected one, her artistic fame was imported from elsewhere; but her exchange dictated its own terms to the rest of the country and to the rest of the world. When the Estates of the Republic gave up the hope of find

Before I tell you the story of the first voyage to India I want to give a short account of another Dutch expedition in the Arctic Sea which ended even more sadly than that of Heemskerk and Barendsz. On their voyage to Nova Zembla the two mariners had discovered a group of islands which on account of their high mountains they had called the "Islands of the Steep Peaks," or Spitzbergen in the Dutch language. These islands provided an excellent center for the whaling fisheries. During the first hal

It was no mean expedition which set sail for the Indies on the second of April of the year 1595 with four ships, 284 men, and an investment of more than three hundred thousand guilders. Amsterdam merchants had provided the capital and the ships. The Estates of Holland and a number of cities in the same province had sent cannon. With large cannon and small harquebus, sixty-four in number, they were a fair match for any Spaniard or Portuguese who might wish to defend his ancient rights upon this r

There was now a great boom in the Indian trade. 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-spe

Oliver van Noort was the first Hollander to sail around the world. Incidentally, he was the fourth navigator to succeed in this dangerous enterprise since in the year 1520 the little ships of Magellan had accomplished the feat of circumnavigating the globe. Of the hero of this memorable Dutch voyage we know almost nothing. He was a modest man, and except for a few lines of personal introduction which appear in the printed story of his voyage, which was published in Rotterdam, his home town, in t

This is the story of another expedition which tried to get possession of the Indian route by way of the Strait of Magellan. It was a sad business. Oliver Van Noort, although he met with many difficulties, managed to bring one ship home and added greatly to the fame of the Dutch navigators. But the second expedition, equipped by two of the richest men of Rotterdam and sent out under the best of auspices, proved to be a total failure. The capital of half a million guilders which had been invested

Captain Bontekoe was a pious man who sailed the ocean in command of several Dutch ships during the early part of the seventeenth century. He never did anything remarkable as a navigator, he never discovered a new continent or a new strait or even a new species of bird but he was blown up with his ship, flew heavenward, landed in the ocean, and survived this experience to tell a tale of such harrowing bad luck that the compassionate world read his story for over three centuries with tearful eyes.

This is the story of a voyage to a country which did not exist. The men who risked their capital in this expedition hoped to reach a territory which we now call Australia. It was not exactly the Australia which we know from our modern geography. It was a mysterious continent of which there had been heard many rumors for more than half a century. What the contemporary traveler really hoped to find we do not know, but we have the details of an expedition to this new land called "Terra Australis in

It often happened that ships of the Dutch East India Company on their way to the Indies were blown out of their course or were carried by the currents in a southern direction. Then they were driven into a part of the map which was as yet unknown, and they had to find their way about very much as a stranger might do who has left the well-known track of the desert. Sometimes these ships were lost. More often they reached a low, flat coast which seemed to extend both east and west as far as the eye

The Hollanders entered the field of geographical exploration at a late date. The Spaniards and the Portuguese had discovered and navigated distant parts of the world for almost two centuries before the Hollander began to leave his own shores. But when we remember that they were a small nation and were engaged upon one of the most gigantic wars which was ever fought, the result of their labors as pioneers of the map was considerable. They found Spitzbergen and many new islands in the Arctic, and