aleigh.

The beginning of the seventeenth century was particularly distinguished by
the voyage of La Maire and Schouten. The States General of Holland, who had
formed an East India Company, in order to secure to it the monopoly of the
Indian trade, prohibited all individuals from navigating to the Indian
Ocean, either round the Cape of Good Hope or through the Straits of
Magellan. It was therefore an object of great importance to discover, if
practicable, any passage to India, which would enable the Dutch, without
incurring the penalties of the law, to reach India. This idea was first
suggested by La Maire, a merchant of Amsterdam, and William Schouten, a
merchant of Horn. They had also another object in view: in all the maps of
the world of the sixteenth century, a great southern continent is laid
down. In 1606, Quiros, a Spanish navigator, had searched in vain for this
continent; and La Maire and Schouten, in their voyage, resolved to look for
it, as well as for a new passage to India. In 1615 they sailed from Holland
with two ships: they coasted Patagonia, discovered the strait which bears
the name of La Maire, and Staten Island, which joins it on the east. On the
31st of January next year, they doubled the southern point of America,
having sailed almost into the sixtieth degree of south latitude; this point
they named Cape Horn, after the town of which Schouten was a native. From
this cape they steered right across the great southern ocean to the
northwest. In their course they discovered several small islands; but
finding no trace of a continent, they gave up the search for it, and
steering to the south, passed to the east of the Papua Archipelago. They
then changed their course to the west; discovered the east coast of the
island, afterwards called New Zealand, as well as the north side of New
Guinea. They afterwards reached Batavia, where they were seized by the
president of the Dutch East India Company. This voyage was important, as it
completed the navigation of the coast of South America from the Strait of
Magellan to Cape Horn, and ascertained that the two great oceans, the
Pacific and the Atlantic, joined each other to the south of America, by a
great austral sea. This voyage added also considerably to maritime
geography, "though many of the islands in the Pacific thus discovered have,
from the errors in their estimated longitudes, been claimed as new
discoveries by more recent navigators." In the year 1623, t