But it was not in Europe nor in Christendom: alone during that twilight
epoch of declining absolutism, regal and sacerdotal, and the coming
glimmer of freedom, religious and commercial, that the contrast between
the old and new civilizations was exhibiting itself.

The same fishermen and fighting men, whom we have but lately seen sailing
forth from Zeeland and Friesland to confront the dangers of either pole,
were now contending in the Indian seas with the Portuguese monopolists of
the tropics.

A century long, the generosity of the Roman pontiff in bestowing upon
others what was not his property had guaranteed to the nation of Vasco de
Gama one half at least of the valuable possessions which maritime genius,
unflinching valour, and boundless cruelty had won and kept. But the
spirit of change was abroad in the world. Potentates and merchants
under the equator had been sedulously taught that there were no other
white men on the planet but the Portuguese and their conquerors the
Spaniards, and that the Dutch--of whom they had recently heard, and the
portrait of whose great military chieftain they had seen after the news
of the Nieuport battle had made the circuit of the earth--were a mere mob
of pirates and savages inhabiting the obscurest of dens. They were soon,
however, to be enabled to judge for themselves as to the power and the
merits of the various competitors for their trade.

Early in this year Andreas Hurtado de Mendoza with a stately fleet of
galleons and smaller vessels, more than five-and-twenty in all, was on
his way towards the island of Java to inflict summary vengeance upon
those oriental rulers who had dared to trade with men forbidden by his
Catholic Majesty and the Pope.