For the splendid fiction of the Spanish lake was still a formidable fact.
Not only were the Portuguese and Spaniards almost the only direct traders
to the distant East, but even had no obstacles been interposed by
Government, the exclusive possession of information as to the course of
trade, the pre-eminent practical knowledge acquired by long experience of
that dangerous highway around the world at a time when oceanic navigation
was still in its infancy, would have given a monopoly of the traffic to
the descendants of the bold discoverers who first opened the great path
to the world's commerce.

The Hollanders as a nation had never been engaged in the direct trade
around the Cape of Good Hope. Fortunately however at this crisis in
their commercial destiny there was a single Hollander who had thoroughly
learned the lesson which it was so necessary that all his countrymen
should now be taught. Few men of that period deserve a more kindly and
more honourable remembrance by posterity for their contributions to
science and the progress of civilization than John Huygen van Linschoten,
son of a plain burgher of West Friesland. Having always felt a strong
impulse to study foreign history and distant nations and customs; he
resolved at the early age of seventeen "to absent himself from his
fatherland, and from the conversation of friends and relatives," in order
to gratify this inclination for self-improvement. After a residence of
two years in Lisbon he departed for India in the suite of the Archbishop
of Goa, and remained in the East for nearly thirteen years. Diligently
examining all the strange phenomena which came under his observation and
patiently recording the results of his researches day by day and year by
year, he amassed a fund of information which he modestly intended for the
entertainment of his friends when he should return to his native country.
It was his wish that "without stirring from their firesides or counting-