ore they executed the plan they were then
contriving for preventing its being visited or farther discovered by
their own or any other nation; and this too accounts for the care taken
in laying down the map of this country on the pavement of the new
stadthouse at Amsterdam; for as this county was henceforward to remain as
a kind of deposit or land of reserve in the hands of the East India
Company, they took this method of intimating as much to their countrymen,
so that, while strangers are gaping at this map as a curiosity, every
intelligent Dutchman may say to himself, "Behold the wisdom of the East
India Company. By their present empire they support the authority of
this republic abroad, and by their extensive commerce enrich its subjects
at home, and at the same time show us here what a reserve they have made
for the benefit of posterity, whenever, through the vicissitudes to which
all sublunary things are liable, their present sources of power and
grandeur shall fail."

I cannot help supporting my opinion in this respect, by putting the
reader in mind of a very curious piece of ancient history, which
furnishes us with the like instance in the conduct of another republic.
Diodorus Siculus, in the fifth book of his Historical Library, informs us
that in the African Ocean, some days' sail west from Libya, there had
been discovered an island, the soil of which was exceedingly fertile and
the country no less pleasant, all the land being finely diversified by
mountains and plains, the former thick clothed with trees, the latter
abounding with fruits and flowers, the whole watered by innumerable
rivulets, and affording so pleasant an habitation that a finer or more
delightful country fancy itself could not feign; yet he assures us, the
Carthagenians, those great masters of maritime power and commerce, though
they had discovered this admirable island, would never suffer it to be
planted, but reserved it as a sanctuary to which they might fly, whenever
the ruin of their own republic left them no other resource. This tallies
exactly with the policy of the Dutch East India Company, who, if they
should at any time be driven from their possessions in Java, Ceylon, and
other places in that neighbourhood, would without doubt retire back into
the Moluccas, and avail themselves effectually of this noble discovery,
which lies open to them, and has been hitherto close shut up to all the
world beside. But to proceed.

CHAPTER XI