enterprise of the earlier navigators of the century. Linschoten had
taught his countrymen the value of the technical details of the Indian
trade as then understood. The voyages of the brothers Houtmann, 1595-
1600, the first Dutch expeditions to reach the East by doubling the Cape
of Good Hope, were undertaken according to his precepts, and directed by
the practical knowledge obtained by the Houtmanns during a residence in
Portugal, but were not signalized by important discoveries. They are
chiefly memorable as having laid the foundation of the vast trade out of
which the republic was to derive so much material power, while at the
same time they mark the slight beginnings of that mighty monopoly, the
Dutch East India Company, which was to teach such tremendous lessons in
commercial restriction to a still more colossal English corporation,
that mercantile tyrant only in our own days overthrown.

At the same time and at the other side of the world seven ships, fitted
out from Holland by private enterprise, were forcing their way to the
South Sea through the terrible strait between Patagonia and Fire Land;
then supposed the only path around the globe. For the tortuous mountain
channel, filled with whirlpools and reefs, and the home of perpetual
tempest, which had been discovered in the early part of the century by
Magellan, was deemed the sole opening pierced by nature through the
mighty southern circumpolar continent. A few years later a daring
Hollander was to demonstrate the futility of this theory, and to give his
own name to a broader pathway, while the stormy headland of South
America, around which the great current of universal commerce was
thenceforth to sweep, was baptized by the name of the tranquil town in
West Friesland where most of his ship's company were born.

Meantime the seven ships under command of Jacob Mahu, Simon de Cordes,
and Sebald de Weerdt; were contending with the dangers of the older