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the world; the Tyre of modern times; the Venice of
the
North; the queen of all the seas.
In 1581, the year after
Portugal had been forcibly annexed to
Spain and the Portuguese settlements in
Asia were become for a season Spanish provinces, the epoch of the independence of the Netherlands, Thomas Buts, an Englishman who had five times crossed the
Atlantic, offered to the States to conduct four ships of war to
America.
The adventure was declined by the government; but no obstacles were offered to private enterprise.
Ten years afterwards,
William Wsselinx,
who had lived some years in
Castile,
Portugal, and the
Azores, proposed a West India Company; but the dangers of the undertaking were still too appalling.
In 1594 the port of
Lisbon was closed by the
King of
Spain against the
Low Countries.
Their carrying trade in Indian goods was lost, unless their ships could penetrate to the seas of
Asia.
A company of merchants, believing that the coast of
Siberia fell away to the south-east, hoped to shorten the voyage at least eight thousand miles by using a north-eastern route.
A double expedition was therefore sent forth on discovery; two flyboats vainly tried to pass through the straits of Veigatz, while, in a large ship,
William Barentsen, whom
Grotius honored as the peer of
Columbus, coasted
Nova Zembla to the seventy-seventh degree, without finding a passage.
Netherlanders in the service of
Portugal had
visited
India,
Malacca,
China, and even
Japan.
Of these
Cornelius Houtman, in April, 1595, sailed for
India by way of the
Cape of Good Hope, and before his return, circumnavigated
Java.
In the same year
Jacob van Heemskerk, the great mariner and naval hero, aided by
Barentsen, renewed the search on the
