y known was to be purchased in
profusion and at reasonable prices in the warehouses of Holland.

A swarm of river vessels and fly-boats were coming daily through the
rivers of Germany, France and the Netherlands, laden with the
agricultural products and the choice manufactures of central and western
Europe. Wine and oil, and delicate fabrics in thread and wool, came from
France, but no silks, velvets, nor satins; for the great Sully had
succeeded in persuading his master that the white mulberry would not grow
in his kingdom, and that silk manufactures were an impossible dream for
France. Nearly a thousand ships were constantly employed in the Baltic
trade. The forests of Holland were almost as extensive as those which
grew on Norwegian hills, but they were submerged. The foundation of a
single mansion required a grove, and wood was extensively used in the
superstructure. The houses, built of a framework of substantial timber,
and filled in with brick or rubble, were raised almost as rapidly as
tents, during the prodigious expansion of industry towards the end of the
war. From the realms of the Osterlings, or shores of the Baltic, came
daily fleets laden with wheat and other grains so that even in time of
famine the granaries of the republic were overflowing, and ready to
dispense the material of life to the outer world.

Eight hundred vessels of lesser size but compact build were perpetually
fishing for herrings on the northern coasts. These hardy mariners, the
militia of the sea, who had learned in their life of hardship and daring
the art of destroying Spanish and Portuguese armadas, and confronting the
dangers of either pole, passed a long season on the deep. Commercial
voyagers as well as fishermen, they salted their fish as soon as taken
from the sea, and transported them to the various ports of Europe, thus
reducing their herrings into specie before their return, and proving that
a fishery in such hands was worth more than the mines of Mexico and Peru.

It is customary to speak of the natural resources of a country as
furnishing a guarantee of material prosperity. But here was a republic
almost without natural resources, which had yet supplied by human
intelligence and thrift what a niggard nature had denied. Spain was
overflowing with unlimited treasure, and had possessed half the world in
fee; and Spain was bankrupt, decaying, sinking into universal pauperism.
Holland, with freedom of thought, of commerce, of