ents and islands stimulated the scholars'
desire for investigation and research. Exaggerated reports about the
mineral wealth and other treasures of the New World had roused the
merchants' spirit of enterprise and acquisition. As visions of the
riches that awaited development in those foreign climes, and of
territories they might once call their own, rose before the minds of
these merchant princes and lords of the sea, the thirst of conquest
quickened in this sturdy seafaring people.

Step by step the Dutch followed the discoveries and explorations of the
Spaniards, and recorded and described them minutely. From the middle of
the sixteenth century on the publishing houses of Amsterdam, Leyden and
other centers of the printing trade of the country sent out books
dealing with the new continent conquered by their enemy, and especially
the West Indies. Stirred by this reading, the spirit of the people rose
and demanded a share in the lands and the wealth which their mariners
had helped to discover. There was an abundance of unemployed labor and
capital in the country. Hence the government, knowing only too well that
the future of the Dutch people lay on the seas, encouraged this spirit
and deliberated upon numerous plans of exploration and colonization.

The first step towards a realization of these plans was taken when a
charter was granted to the Dutch East India Company, which gave that
organization the exclusive right to commerce beyond the Cape of Good
Hope on the one side and the Straits of Magellan on the other side. As
it recalled similarly privileged institutions in feudal times, when the
rights of the classes engaged in trade and industry had to be protected
against violation by noble lords, more properly called robber barons,
the ideal this company represented appealed to the people. Statesmen of
other countries realized its advantages and the Dutch East India Company
became the model for the great trade corporations which eventually
sprang up in France and England.

But the East alone could not engage all the forces of the active little
country. The tales of the sailors and the books about the Western
Hemisphere made the people look more and more longingly towards the
continent and the islands across the Atlantic. There unlimited
opportunities beckoned; there was an outlet for their energies. But
unfortunately the Spaniards had long before this established their
claims in that continent and the men at the helm