a treaty with
the native prince of Kandy. The Portuguese still possessed forts at
Colombo, Galle, Negumbo and other places, but Galle and Negumbo were now
taken by the Dutch, and gradually the whole island passed into their
hands and became for a century and a half their richest possession in
the East, next to Java. On the Coromandel coast posts were also early
established, and trade relations opened up with the Persians and Arabs.
At the time when the Treaty of Muenster gave to the United Provinces the
legal title to that independence for which they had so long fought, and
conceded to them the freedom to trade in the Indies, that trade was
already theirs, safe-guarded by the fleets, the forts and the armed
forces of the chartered company. The governor-general at Batavia had
become a powerful potentate in the Eastern seas; and a succession of
bold and able men, by a policy at once prudent and aggressive, had in
the course of a few decades organised a colonial empire. It was a
remarkable achievement for so small a country as the United Provinces,
and it was destined to have a prolonged life. The voyage round by the
cape was long and hazardous, so Van Diemen in 1638 caused the island of
Mauritius to be occupied as a refitting station; and in 1652 one of his
successors (Reinierz) sent a body of colonists under Jan van Riebeck to
form a settlement, which should be a harbour of refuge beneath the Table
mountain at the Cape itself. This was the beginning of the Cape colony.

Quite as interesting, and even more exciting, was the history of Dutch
enterprise in other seas during this eventful period. The granting of
the East India Company's charter led a certain Willem Usselincx to come
forward as an earnest and persistent advocate for the formation of a
West India Company on the same lines. But Oldenbarneveldt, anxious to
negotiate a peace or truce with Spain and to maintain good relations
with that power, refused to lend any countenance to his proposals,
either before or after the truce was concluded. He could not, however,
restrain the spirit of enterprise that with increasing prosperity was
abroad in Holland. The formation of the Northern or Greenland Company in
1613, specially created in order to contest the claims of the English
Muscovy Company to exclusive rights in the whale fishery off
Spitsbergen, led to those violent disputes between the fishermen of the
two countries, of which an account has been given. The granting o