its aptitude for foreign
trade, should take the lead in the great commercial movements which
characterized the close of the sixteenth and the commencement of the
seventeenth centuries.

While Barendz and Heemskerk were attempting to force the frozen gates
which were then supposed to guard the northern highway of commerce,
fleets were fitting out in Holland to storm the Southern Pole, or at
least to take advantage of the pathways already opened by the genius and
enterprise of the earlier navigators of the century. Linschoten had
taught his countrymen the value of the technical details of the Indian
trade as then understood. The voyages of the brothers Houtmann,
1595-1600, the first Dutch expeditions to reach the East by doubling the
Cape of Good Hope, were undertaken according to his precepts, and
directed by the practical knowledge obtained by the Houtmanns during a
residence in Portugal, but were not signalized by important discoveries.
They are chiefly memorable as having laid the foundation of the vast
trade out of which the republic was to derive so much material power,
while at the same time they mark the slight beginnings of that mighty
monopoly, the Dutch East India Company, which was to teach such
tremendous lessons in commercial restriction to a still more colossal
English corporation, that mercantile tyrant only in our own days
overthrown.

At the same time and at the other side of the world seven ships, fitted
out from Holland by private enterprise, were forcing their way to the
South Sea through the terrible strait between Patagonia and Fire Land;
then supposed the only path around the globe. For the tortuous mountain
channel, filled with whirlpools and reefs, and the home of perpetual
tempest, which had been discovered in the early part of the century by
Magellan, was deemed the sole opening pierced by nature through the
mighty southern circumpolar continent. A few years later a daring
Hollander was to demonstrate the futility of this theory, and to give his
own name to a broader pathway, while the stormy headland of South
America, around which the great current of universal commerce was
thenceforth to sweep, was baptized by the name of the tranquil town in
West Friesland where most of his ship's company were born.

Meantime the seven ships under command of Jacob Mahu, Simon de Cordes,
and Sebald de Weerdt; were contending with the dangers of the older
route. The expedition sailed from Holland in June,