lly forbade the
nutmeg trade to all but the subjects, of the most Catholic king.

In Atsgen or Achim, chief city of Sumatra, a treaty was likewise made
with the government of the place, and it was arranged that the king of
Atsgen should send over an embassy to the distant but friendly republic.
Thus he might judge whether the Hollanders were enemies of all the world,
as had been represented to him, or only of Spain; whether their knowledge
of the arts and sciences, and their position among the western nations
entitled them to respect, and made their friendship desirable; or whether
they were only worthy of the contempt which their royal and aristocratic
enemies delighted to heap upon their heads. The envoys sailed from
Sumatra on board the same little fleet which, under the command of
Wolfert Hermann, had already done such signal service, and on their way
to Europe they had an opportunity of seeing how these republican sailors
could deal with their enemies on the ocean.

Off St. Helena an immense Portuguese carrack richly laden and powerfully
armed, was met, attacked, and overpowered by the little merchantmen with
their usual audacity and skill. A magnificent booty was equitably divided
among the captors, the vanquished crew were set safely on shore; and the
Hollanders then pursued their home voyage without further adventures.

The ambassadors; with an Arab interpreter, were duly presented to Prince
Maurice in the lines before the city of Grave. Certainly no more
favourable opportunity could have been offered them for contrasting the
reality of military power, science, national vigour; and wealth, which
made the republic eminent among the nations, with the fiction of a horde
of insignificant and bloodthirsty savages which her enemies had made so
familiar at the antipodes. Not only were the intrenchments bastions,
galleries, batteries, the discipline and equipment of the troops, a
miracle in the eyes of these newly arrived Oriental ambassadors, but they
had awakened the astonishment of Europe, already accustomed to such
spectacles. Evidently the amity of the stadholder and his commonwealth
was a jewel of price, and the King of Achim would have been far more
barbarous than he had ever deemed the Dutchmen to be, had he not well
heeded the lesson which he had sent so far to learn.

The chief of the legation, Abdulzamar, died in Zeeland, and was buried
with honourable obsequies at Middleburg, a monument being raised to his