The Story of Mankind

s, 284 men, and an investment of more than three hundred thousand guilders. Amsterdam merchants had provided t

ght wish to defend his ancient rights upon this royal Indian route, which ran down the Atlantic, doubled the Cape of Good

proudly called after the newly created sovereign republic of the seven united Netherlands; the Mauritius, bearing the name of the eminent general whose scientific strategy was forcing the

oyage was this: the four captains mutually distrustful, each followed his own obstinate will. They quarreled among themselves, they quarreled with the four civil directors who represented the owners and the capitalists in Holland, and who together with the captains were supposed to form a legislative and executive council for all the daily affairs of the long voyage. Finally they quarreled with the chief representative of the commercial in

liged to keep the peace between his many subordinate commanders, but he was also obliged to control the collection of most undesirable elements who made up the crews of this memorable expedition. I am sorry that I have to say this, but in the year 1595 people did not venture upon a phantastical voyage to an unknown land along a highly perilous route unless there was some good reason why they should leave their comfortable native shores. The commanders of the ships and their chief officers were first class sailors. The lower grades, too, were filled with a fairly sober crowd of men, but the common sailor almost without exception belonged to a class of worthless youngsters who left

rs whose power of will turned these wild bands of adventurers into valiant soldiers. And when we study the history of ou

of the gallows and the flogging-pole, and after a great deal of gunpowder had been wasted upon salutes the ships sailed to the Texel. Here they waited in the roads for two weeks, and then with a favorable wind from the north s

peared upon the horizon. Kindly remember that this was only a few years after the desperate struggle with Spain and while yet any ship that might be considered popish was a welcome prize. Therefore the instinct of all the Hollanders on board demanded that this easy booty be captured. These ships, so the men reasoned, would provide more profit than an endless, dreary trip to an unknown Indian se

s time, however, a large supply of wine had been taken along, and when they reached the tropics each of the sailors got a pint of wine per day as a remedy or, rather, a preventive of the dreaded disease. But it increased rapidly, and with a feeling of deep relief the sailors welcomed the appearance of wild birds, which indicated that the Cape of Good Hope must be near. Early in August they sailed past the southern point of the African continent, and dropped anchor in a small bay near the spot where now the town of Port E

ort, in the language of the sixteenth century they looked like people who had been hanging on the gallows for a long time and had shriveled into the leathern caricature of a man. A dirty piece of skin served them as clothing, and their language sounded to the Dutch sailors like the cackling of a herd of angry turkeys. As for their manners, th

e of that most amusing and clownish of all living creatures, the penguin. The penguin has risen in the social scale of wild birds since he has become one of the chief attractions of the moving-pictures. In the year 1595 he was every bit as silly and absurd an animal as he is now, when he wanders forth to make friends with the sailors of our South

ands, but there had been so much illness among the crew that the plan had to be given up. They decided to call at Madagascar first of all. There they hoped to find an a

which he had been trying to reach all the time and thanked divine Providence for his luck. The particular bay renowned for its fresh water and vegetables, that the expedition hoped to reach was situated on the east coast of Madagascar, but a small gale blew the ships to the westward. They could not reach the southern cape, and they were forced to take whate

one-quarter of the men who had left Holland. The situation was far from pleasant when the Pigeon, which had been sent out to reconnoiter, came back with good tidings. A tribe of natives had been found that was willing to enter into peaceful trade with the

onsiderable friction. One night the natives attacked the camp where the sick men slept. The Hollanders, from their side, took four young natives to their ships and kept them there as prisoners. The four of course tried to escape. One was drowned, pulled down by his heavy chains. Two others hid themselves in a small boat and were recaptured the next day. A few days after this event the mate of one o

s, however, scurvy once more played such havoc among the sailors that the ships were obliged to sail back to Madagascar. They found the small island called Santa Maria on the east coast. The natives here were more civilized, there was an ab

and were washed on shore. The next morning a sloop was sent after these boats, but during the night the natives, in their desire for iron nails, had hacked the boats to pieces. When thereupon the boat with sailors approached the village, the natives, expecting a punitive expedition, attacked the men with stones. The Hollanders fired their muskets, the power of which seemed unknown to these people, for they gazed

to control the actions of the regular seafaring people. It is not surprising, therefore, to find the officers taking the side of De Keyser and turning against the civilians. Houtman in his high official altitude and in a very tactless way, declared that he would not recognize De Keyser. De Keyser, to avoid friction, then declared that he would voluntarily resign, but the other officers declared that they would not hear of such a thing. Thereupon Houtman insisted that he, as civilian commander, had a right to demand the strictest obedience to the orders of the owners. The officers told Houtman what they would be before they obeyed a mere civilian. Houtman stood his ground. The council of the captains broke up in a free-for-all fight, and the most violent backers of De Keyser declared that they would shoot Houtman rather than give in. Thus far the quarrel had been about the theoretical principle whether the actual sailors or the civilian commissioners should be the masters of

r with the straits between the islands offered to act as pilot on their further trip to Bantam. For eight reals in gold he promised to guide them safely to the north shore of Java. The amount was small, but the distance was short. On the twenty-third of June of the year 1596 four Dutch ships appeared for the first time in the roads of Bantam, and were welcomed by the Portuguese with all the civility which the sight of sixty-four cannon demanded. At that time Bantam was an important city, th

te of the most powerful Dutch commonwealth, he called upon the regent, who was governing the country during the minority of the actual sultan. He made his visit in great state, and through a number of presents he gained the favor of the regent. On the first of July he obtained the desired commercial treaty. The Hollanders were allowed to trade freely, and a house was put at their disposal to serve as a general office and stor

ions, but did the regent know who those people were? It is true that they claimed to be the representatives of a certain Prince of Nassau. Was there such a Prince? They might just as well be common b

t, but the Hollanders soon noticed that whereas they found it difficult to buy anything at all in Bantam, Portuguese vessels left the harbor every week with heavy cargoe

, and at last the tension between them grew so serious that the Hollanders decided to remove their goods from their storehouse and bring them on the ships. But while they were loading their possessions into the boats Houtman and another civilian by the name of Willem Lodewycksz were suddenly taken prisoner and brought to the castle of the

ading might be resumed. Meanwhile, however, the Portuguese had asked for reinforcements to be sent from their colony in Malacca, and a high Portuguese official was already on his way to Bantam to offer the regent ten thousand reals for the surrender of the entire Dutch fleet. Of these negotiations the Dutch commander obtained full details through a friendly Portuguese merchant. Since everybody spied upon everybody else, this merchant's secret correspondence was soon detected, an

several other cities on the Javanese coast; but everywhere the people had been warned by the Portuguese against ungodly pirates who were soon to come with

and the trumpeters-it was a time when signals on board were given with a trumpet-bellowed forth a welcome. The Amsterdam was the first ship to be reached. The captain stood ready at the gangway to welcome the dusky sovereign, but suddenly his ship was attacked from all sides by a horde of small brown men. They swarmed over the bulwarks and hacked a dozen Hollanders to pieces before the others could defend themselves. These in turn gave fight as best they could with knives and wooden bars, but many more were

ood idea, for the people on the Amsterdam, who had just seen the massacre of their comrades, were very nervous and in no condition to receive another visit of natives, however friendly they intended to be. But through a mistake the boat of the interpreter did not turn toward the Mauritius, but returned once more to the Amsterdam, apparently to ask for furt

Molucca Islands. But for this voyage the ninety-four sailors who were still alive-all the others who had left Holland the year before were dead-hardly sufficed. Furthermore, the Amsterdam was beginning

r suffering dreadful pains. Healthy people, so the sailors whispered, did not die that way, and they accused Houtman, who did not like this particular captain, of having put poison into his food. Houtman was attacked by his own men, and he

know who they were. They told him that they came from a country which was situated in the northern part of Europe, where the water turned into a solid mass across which you could drive a horse every winter. This country, according to their descriptions, covered a region occupied by Russia, France, and Germany. There was but little truth in these grandiloquent stories, but they were dealing with an innocent native who must be duly impressed by the great power and the enormous riches of the home of ninety-odd, bedraggled and much traveled Dutch sailors. The account which the sailors gave of their country so deeply impressed the king that he al

t there were not nearly such large revenues as were to follow in the succeeding years. Furthermore, Houtman had not been able to establish any lasting relations with any of the n

e incident due to their own lack of experience and

achievement to anybody possessed of energy and courage. It showed that the power of the Portuguese in India was not as strong as had been expected. It showed that the dream of an independent colonial empire for the new D