ther for peaceable seafaring or ocean
warfare. The ships were capable of furnishing from out of their number in
time of need the most numerous and the best appointed navy then known to
mankind.

The republic had the carrying trade for all nations. Feeling its very
existence dependent upon commerce, it had strode centuries in advance of
the contemporary world in the liberation of trade. But two or three per
cent. ad valorem was levied upon imports; foreign goods however being
subject, as well as internal products, to heavy imposts in the way of
both direct and indirect taxation.

Every article of necessity or luxury 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