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HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
By John Lothrop Motley
MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Vol. 71
History of the United Netherlands, 1598-1599
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Commercial prospects of Holland--Travels of John Huygen van
Linschoten Their effect on the trade and prosperity of the
Netherlands--Progress of nautical and geographical science--Maritime
exploration--Fantastic notions respecting the polar regions--State
of nautical science--First arctic expedition--Success of the
voyagers--Failure of the second expedition--Third attempt to
discover the north-east passage--Discovery of Spitzbergen--
Scientific results of the voyage--Adventures in the frozen regions--
Death of William Barendz--Return of the voyagers to Amsterdam--
Southern expedition against the Spanish power--Disasters attendant
upon it--Extent of Dutch discovery.
During a great portion of Philip's reign the Netherlanders, despite their
rebellion, had been permitted to trade with Spain. A spectacle had thus
been presented of a vigorous traffic between two mighty belligerents, who
derived from their intercourse with each other the means of more
thoroughly carrying on their mutual hostilities. The war fed their
commerce, and commerce fed their war. The great maritime discoveries at
the close of the fifteenth century had enured quite as much to the
benefit of the Flemings and Hollanders as to that of the Spaniards and
Portuguese, to whom they were originally due. Antwerp and subsequently
Amsterdam had thriven on the great revolution of the Indian trade which
Vasco de Gama's voyage around the Cape had effected. The nations of the
Baltic and of farthest Ind now exchanged their products on a more
extensive scale. and with a wider sweep across the earth than when the
mistress of the Adriatic alone held the keys of Asiatic commerce. The
haughty but intelligent oligarchy of shopkeepers, which had grown so rich
and attained so eminent a political position from its magnificent
monopoly, already saw the sources of its grandeur drying up before its
eyes, now that the world's trade--for the first time in human history--
had become oceanic.
In Holland, long since denuded of forests, were great markets of timber,
whither shipbuilders and architects came from all parts of the world to
gather the utensils for their craft. There, too, where scarcely a pebble
had been deposited in the course of the geological transformations of our
planet, were great artificial quarries of granite, and marble, and
basalt. Wheat was almost as rare a product of the soil as cinnamon, yet
the granaries of Christendom, and the Oriental magazines of spices and
drugs, were found chiefly on that barren spot of earth. There was the
great international mart where the Osterling, the Turk, the Hindoo, the
Atlantic and the Mediterranean traders stored their wares and negotiated
their exchanges; while the curious and highly-prized products of
Netherland skill--broadcloths, tapestries, brocades, laces, substantial
fustians, magnificent damasks, finest linens--increased the mass of
visible wealth piled mountains high upon that extraordinary soil which
produced nothing and teemed with everything.
After the incorporation of Portugal with Spain however many obstacles
were thrown in the way of the trade from the Netherlands to Lisbon and
the Spanish ports. Loud and bitter were the railings uttered, as we
know, by the English sovereign and her statesmen against the nefarious
traffic which the Dutch republic persisted in carrying on with the common
enemy. But it is very certain that although the Spanish armadas would
have found it comparatively difficult to equip themselves without the tar
and the timber, the cordage, the stores, and the biscuits furnished by
the Hollanders, the rebellious commonwealth, if excluded from the world's
commerce, in which it had learned to play so controlling a part, must
have ceased to exist. For without foreign navigation the independent
republic was an inconceivable idea. Not only would it have been
incapable of continuing the struggle with the greatest monarch in the
world, but it might as well have buried itself once and for ever beneath
the waves from which it had scarcely emerged. Commerce and Holland were
simply synonymous terms. Its morsel of territory was but the wharf to
which the republic was occasionally moored; its home was in every ocean
and over all the world. Nowhere had there ever existed before so large a
proportion of population that was essentially maritime. They were born
sailors--men and women alike--and numerous were the children who had
never set foot on the shore. At the period now treated of the republic
had three times as many ships and sailors as any one nation in the world.
Compared with modern times, and especially with the gigantic commercial
strides of the two great Anglo-Saxon families, the statistics both of
population and of maritime commerce in that famous and most vigorous
epoch would seem sufficiently meagre. Yet there is no doubt that in the
relative estimate of forces then in activity it would be difficult to
exaggerate the naval power of the young commonwealth. When therefore,
towards the close of Philip II.'s reign, it became necessary to renounce
the carrying trade with Spain and Portugal, by which the communication
with India and China was effected, or else to submit to the confiscation
of Dutch ships in Spanish ports, and the confinement of Dutch sailors in
the dungeons of the Inquisition, a more serious dilemma was presented to
the statesmen of the Netherlands than they had ever been called upon to
solve.
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-
houses" they might participate with him in the gratification and
instruction to be derived fiom looking upon a world then so strange, and
for Europeans still so new. He described the manners and customs, the
laws, the religions, the social and political institutions, of the
ancient races who dwelt in either peninsula of India. He studied the
natural history, the botany, the geography of all the regions which he
visited. Especially the products which formed the material of a great
traffic; the system of culture, the means of transportation, and the
course of commerce, were examined by him with minuteness, accuracy, and
breadth of vision. He was neither a trader nor a sailor, but a man of
letters, a scientific and professional traveller. But it was obvious
when he returned, rich with the spoils of oriental study during thirteen
years of life, that the results of his researches were worthy of a wider
circulation than that which he had originally contemplated. His work was
given to the public in the year 1596, and was studied with avidity not
only by men of science but by merchants and seafarers. He also added to
the record of his Indian experiences a practical manual for navigators.
He described the course of the voyage from Lisbon to the East, the
currents, the trade-winds and monsoons, the harbours, the islands, the
shoals, the sunken rocks and dangerous quicksands, and he accompanied
his work with various maps and charts, both general and special, of land
and water, rarely delineated before his day, as well as by various
astronomical and mathematical calculations. Already a countryman of
his own, Wagenaar of Zeeland, had laid the mariners of the world under
special obligation by a manual which came into such universal use that
for centuries afterwards the sailors of England and of other countries
called their indispensable 'vade-mecum' a Wagenaar. But in that text-
book but little information was afforded to eastern voyagers, because,
before the enterprise of Linschoten, little was known of the Orient
except to the Portuguese and Spaniards, by whom nothing was communicated.
The work of Linschoten was a source of wealth, both from the scientific
treasures which it diffused among an active and intelligent people, and
the impulse which it gave to that direct trade between the Netherlands
and the East which had been so long deferred, and which now came to
relieve the commerce of the republic, and therefore the republic itself,
from the danger of positive annihilation.
It is not necessary for my purpose to describe in detail the series of
voyages by way of the Cape of Good Hope which, beginning with the
adventures of the brothers Houtmann at this period, and with the
circumnavigation of the world by Olivier van Noord, made the Dutch for
a long time the leading Christian nation in those golden regions, and
which carried the United Netherlands to the highest point of prosperity
and power. The Spanish monopoly of the Indian and the Pacific Ocean was
effectually disposed of, but the road was not a new road, nor did any
striking discoveries at this immediate epoch illustrate the enterprise of
Holland in the East. In the age just opening the homely names most dear
to the young republic were to be inscribed on capes, islands, and
promontories, seas, bays, and continents. There was soon to be a "Staten
Island" both in the frozen circles of the northern and of the southern
pole, as well as in that favoured region where now the mighty current of
a worldwide commerce flows through the gates of that great metropolis of
the western world, once called New Amsterdam. Those well-beloved words,
Orange and Nassau, Maurice and William, intermingled with the names of
many an ancient town and village, or with the simple patronymics of hardy
navigators or honoured statesmen, were to make the vernacular of the new
commonwealth a familiar sound in the remotest corners of the earth; while
a fifth continent, discovered by the enterprise of Hollanders, was soon
to be fitly baptized with the name of the fatherland. Posterity has been
neither just nor grateful, and those early names which Dutch genius and
enterprise wrote upon so many prominent points of the earth's surface,
then seen for the first time by European eyes, are no longer known.
The impulse given to the foreign trade of the Netherlands by the
publication of Linschoten's work was destined to be a lasting one.
Meantime this most indefatigable and enterprising voyager--one of those
men who had done nothing in his own estimation so long as aught remained
to do--was deeply pondering the possibility of a shorter road to the
opulent kingdoms of Cathay and of China than the one which the genius of
De Gama had opened to his sovereigns. Geography as a science was
manifesting the highest activity at that period, but was still in a
rudimentary state. To the Hollanders especially much of the progress
already made by it was owing. The maps of the world by Mercator of
Leyden, published on a large scale, together with many astronomical and
geographical charts, delineations of exploration, and other scientific
works, at the magnificent printing establishment of William Blaeuw, in
Amsterdam, the friend and pupil of Tycho Brahe, and the first in that
line of typographers who made the name famous, constituted an epoch in
cosmography. Another ardent student of geography lived in Amsterdam,
Peter Plancius by name, a Calvinist preacher, and one of the most zealous
and intolerant of his cloth. In an age and a country which had not yet
thoroughly learned the lesson taught by hundreds of thousands of murders
committed by an orthodox church, he was one of those who considered the
substitution of a new dogma and a new hierarchy, a new orthodoxy and a
new church, in place of the old ones, a satisfactory result for fifty,
years of perpetual bloodshed. Nether Torquemada nor Peter Titelmann
could have more thoroughly abhorred a Jew or a Calvinist than Peter
Plancius detested a Lutheran, or any other of the unclean tribe of
remonstranta. That the intolerance of himself and his comrades was
confined to fiery words, and was not manifested in the actual burning
alive of the heterodox, was a mark of the advance made by the mass of
mankind in despite of bigotry. It was at any rate a solace to those who
believed in human progress; even in matters of conscience, that no other
ecclesiastical establishment was ever likely to imitate the matchless
machinery for the extermination of heretical vermin which the Church of
Rome had found in the Spanish Inquisition. The blasts of denunciation
from the pulpit of Plancius have long since mingled with empty air and
been forgotten, but his services in the cause of nautical enterprise and
geographical science, which formed, as it were, a relaxation to what he
deemed the more serious pursuits of theology, will endear his name for
ever to the lovers of civilization.
Plancius and Dr. Francis Maalzoon--the enlightened pensionary of
Enkhuizen--had studied long and earnestly the history and aspects of the
oceanic trade, which had been unfolding itself then for a whole century,
but was still comparatively new, while Barneveld, ever ready to assist in
the advancement of science, and to foster that commerce which was the
life of the commonwealth, was most favourably disposed towards projects
of maritime exploration. For hitherto, although the Hollanders had been
among the hardiest and the foremost in the art of navigation they had
contributed but little to actual discovery. A Genoese had led the way to
America, while one Portuguese mariner had been the first to double the
southern cape of Africa, and another, at the opposite side of the world,
had opened what was then supposed the only passage through the vast
continent which, according to ideas then prevalent, extended from the
Southern Pole to Greenland, and from Java to Patagonia. But it was
easier to follow in the wake of Columbus, Gama, or Magellan, than to
strike out new pathways by the aid of scientific deduction and audacious
enterprise. At a not distant day many errors, disseminated by the
boldest of Portuguese navigators, were to be corrected by the splendid
discoveries of sailors sent forth by the Dutch republic, and a rich
harvest in consequence was to be reaped both by science and commerce. It
is true, too, that the Netherlanders claimed to have led the way to the
great voyages of Columbus by their discovery of the Azores. Joshua van
den Berg, a merchant of Bruges, it was vigorously maintained, had landed
in that archipelago in the year 1445. He had found there, however, no
vestiges of the human race, save that upon the principal island, in the
midst of the solitude, was seen--so ran the tale--a colossal statue of a
man on horseback, wrapped in a cloak, holding the reins of his steed in
his left hand, and solemnly extending his right arm to the west. This
gigantic and solitary apparition on a rock in the ocean was supposed
to indicate the existence of a new world, and the direction in which it
was to be sought, but it is probable that the shipwrecked Fleeting was
quite innocent of any such magnificent visions. The original designation
of the Flemish Islands, derived from their first colonization by
Netherlanders, was changed to Azores by Portuguese mariners, amazed at
the myriads of hawks which they found there. But if the Netherlanders
had never been able to make higher claims as discoverers than the
accidental and dubious landing upon an unknown shore of a tempest-tost
mariner, their position in the records of geographical exploration would
not be so eminent as it certainly is.
Meantime the eyes of Linschoten, Plancius, Maalzoon, Barneveld, and of
many other ardent philosophers and patriots, were turned anxiously
towards the regions of the North Pole. Two centuries later--and still
more recently in our own day and generation--what heart has not thrilled
with sympathy and with pride at the story of the magnificent exploits,
the heroism, the contempt of danger and of suffering which have
characterized the great navigators whose names are so familiar to the
world; especially the arctic explorers of England and of our own country?
The true chivalry of an advanced epoch--recognizing that there can be no
sublimer vocation for men of action than to extend the boundary of human
knowledge in the face of perils and obstacles more formidable and more
mysterious than those encountered by the knights of old in the cause of
the Lord's sepulchre or the holy grail--they have thus embodied in a form
which will ever awaken enthusiasm in imaginative natures, the noble
impulses of our latter civilization. To win the favour of that noblest
of mistresses, Science; to take authoritative possession, in her name,
of the whole domain of humanity; to open new pathways to commerce; to
elevate and enlarge the human intellect, and to multiply indefinitely the
sum of human enjoyments; to bring the inhabitants of the earth into
closer and more friendly communication, so that, after some yet
unimagined inventions and discoveries, and after the lapse of many years,
which in the sight of the Omnipotent are but as one day, the human race
may form one pacific family, instead of being broken up, as are the most
enlightened of peoples now, into warring tribes of internecine savages,
prating of the advancement of civilization while coveting each other's
possessions, intriguing against each other's interests, and thoroughly in
earnest when cutting each other's throats; this is truly to be the
pioneers of a possible civilization, compared to which our present
culture may seem but a poor barbarism. If the triumphs and joys of the
battle-field have been esteemed among the noblest themes for poet,
painter, or chronicler, alike in the mists of antiquity and in the full
glare of later days, surely a still more encouraging spectacle for those
who believe in the world's progress is the exhibition of almost infinite
valour, skill, and endurance in the cause of science and humanity.
It was believed by the Dutch cosmographers that some ten thousand miles
of voyaging might be saved, could the passage to what was then called the
kingdoms of Cathay be effected by way of the north. It must be
remembered that there were no maps of the unknown regions lying beyond
the northern headlands of Sweden. Delineations of continents, islands,
straits, rivers, and seas, over which every modern schoolboy pores, were
not attempted even by the hand of fancy. It was perhaps easier at the
end of the sixteenth century than it is now, to admit the possibility of
a practical path to China and India across the pole; for delusions as to
climate and geographical configuration then prevalent have long since
been dispelled. While, therefore, at least as much heroism was required
then as now to launch into those unknown seas, in hope to solve the dread
mystery of the North; there was even a firmer hope than can ever be
cherished again of deriving an immediate and tangible benefit from the
enterprise. Plancius and Maalzoon, the States-General and Prince
Maurice, were convinced that the true road to Cathay would be found by
sailing north-east. Linschoten, the man who knew India and the beaten
paths to India better than any other living Christian, was so firmly
convinced of the truth of this theory, that he volunteered to take the
lead in the first expedition. Many were the fantastic dreams in which
even the wisest thinkers of the age indulged as to the polar regions.
Four straits or channels, pierced by a magic hand, led, it was thought,
from the interior of Muscovy towards the arctic seas. According to some
speculators, however, those seas enclosed a polar continent where
perpetual summer and unbroken daylight reigned, and whose inhabitants,
having obtained a high degree of culture; lived in the practice of every
virtue and in the enjoyment of every blessing. Others peopled these
mysterious regions with horrible savages, having hoofs of horses and
heads of dogs, and with no clothing save their own long ears coiled
closely around their limbs and bodies; while it was deemed almost certain
that a race of headless men, with eyes in their breasts, were the most
enlightened among those distant tribes. Instead of constant sunshine,
it was believed by such theorists that the wretched inhabitants of that
accursed zone were immersed in almost incessant fogs or tempests, that
the whole population died every winter and were only recalled to
temporary existence by the advent of a tardy and evanescent spring.
No doubt was felt that the voyager in those latitudes would have to
encounter volcanoes of fire and mountains of ice, together with land and
sea monsters more ferocious than the eye of man had ever beheld; but it
was universally admitted that an opening, either by strait or sea, into
the desired Indian haven would reveal itself at last.
The instruments of navigation too were but rude and defective compared to
the beautiful machinery with which modern art and science now assist
their votaries along the dangerous path of discovery. The small yet
unwieldy, awkward, and, to the modern mind, most grotesque vessels in
which such audacious deeds were performed in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries awaken perpetual astonishment. A ship of a hundred
tons burden, built up like a tower, both at stem and stern, and
presenting in its broad bulbous prow, its width of beam in proportion to
its length, its depression amidships, and in other sins against symmetry,
as much opposition to progress over the waves as could well be imagined,
was the vehicle in which those indomitable Dutchmen circumnavigated the
globe and confronted the arctic terrors of either pole. An astrolabe--
such as Martin Beheim had invented for the Portuguese, a clumsy
astronomical ring of three feet in circumference--was still the chief
machine used for ascertaining the latitude, and on shipboard a most
defective one. There were no logarithms, no means of determining at sea
the variations of the magnetic needle, no system of dead reckoning by
throwing the log and chronicling the courses traversed. The firearms
with which the sailors were to do battle with the unknown enemies that
might beset their path were rude and clumsy to handle. The art of
compressing and condensing provisions was unknown. They had no tea nor
coffee to refresh the nervous system in its terrible trials; but there
was one deficiency which perhaps supplied the place of many positive
luxuries. Those Hollanders drank no ardent spirits. They had beer
and wine in reasonable quantities, but no mention is ever made in the
journals of their famous voyages of any more potent liquor; and to
this circumstance doubtless the absence of mutinous or disorderly
demonstrations, under the most trying circumstances, may in a great
degree be attributed.
Thus, these navigators were but slenderly provided with the appliances
with which hazardous voyages have been smoothed by modern art; but they
had iron hearts, faith in themselves, in their commanders, in their
republic, and in the Omnipotent; perfect discipline and unbroken
cheerfulness amid toil, suffering, and danger. No chapter of history
utters a more beautiful homily an devotion to duty as the true guiding
principle of human conduct than the artless narratives which have been
preserved of many of these maritime enterprises. It is for these noble
lessons that they deserve to be kept in perpetual memory.
And in no individual of that day were those excellent qualities more
thoroughly embodied than in William Barendz, pilot and burgher of
Amsterdam. It was partly under his charge that the first little
expedition set forth on the 5th of June, 1594, towards those unknown
arctic seas, which no keel from Christendom had ever ploughed, and to
those fabulous regions where the foot of civilized men had never trod.
Maalzoon, Plancius, and Balthaser Moucheron, merchant of Middelburg, were
the chief directors of the enterprise; but there was a difference of
opinion between them.
The pensionary was firm in the faith that the true path to China would be
found by steering through the passage which was known to exist between
the land of Nova Zembla and the northern coasts of Muscovy, inhabited by
the savage tribes called Samoyedes. It was believed that, after passing
those straits, the shores of the great continent would be found to trend
in a south-easterly direction, and that along that coast it would
accordingly be easy to make the desired voyage to the eastern ports of
China. Plancius, on the contrary, indicated as the most promising
passage the outside course, between the northern coast of Nova Zembla and
the pole. Three ships and a fishing yacht were provided by the cities of
Enkhuizen, Amsterdam, and by the province of Zeeland respectively.
Linschoten was principal commissioner on board the Enkhuizen vessel,
having with him an experienced mariner, Brandt Ijsbrantz by name, as
skipper. Barendz, with the Amsterdam ship and the yacht, soon parted
company with the others, and steered, according to the counsels of
Plancius and his own convictions; for the open seas of the north. And in
that memorable summer, for the first time in the world's history, the
whole desolate region of Nova Zembla was visited, investigated, and
thoroughly mapped out. Barendz sailed as far as latitude 77 deg. and to
the extreme north-eastern point of the island. In a tremendous storm off
a cape, which he ironically christened Consolationhook (Troost-hoek), his
ship, drifting under bare poles amid ice and mist and tempest, was nearly
dashed to pieces; but he reached at last the cluster of barren islets
beyond the utmost verge of Nova Zembla, to which he hastened to affix the
cherished appellation of Orange. This, however, was the limit of his
voyage. His ship was ill-provisioned, and the weather had been severe
beyond expectation. He turned back on the 1st of August, resolving to
repeat his experiment early in the following year.
Meantime Linschoten, with the ships Swan and Mercury, had entered the
passage which they called the Straits of Nassau, but which are now
known to all the world as the Waigats. They were informed by the
Samoyedes of the coast that, after penetrating the narrow channel, they
would find themselves in a broad and open sea. Subsequent discoveries
showed the correctness of the statement, but it was not permitted to the
adventurers on this occasion to proceed so far. The strait was already
filled with ice-drift, and their vessels were brought to a standstill,
after about a hundred and fifty English miles of progress beyond the
Waigats; for the whole sea of Tartary, converted into a mass of ice-
mountains and islands, and lashed into violent agitation by a north
easterly storm, seemed driving down upon the doomed voyagers. It was
obvious that the sunny clime of Cathay was not thus to be reached, at
least upon that occasion. With difficulty they succeeded in extricating
themselves from the dangers surrounding them, and emerged at last from
the Waigats.
On the 15th of August, in latitude 69 deg. 15', they met the ship of
Barendz and returned in company to Holland, reaching Amsterdam on the
16th of September. Barendz had found the seas and coasts visited by him
destitute of human inhabitants, but swarming with polar bears, with
seals, with a terrible kind of monsters, then seen for the first time, as
large as oxen, with almost human faces and with two long tusks protruding
from each grim and grotesque visage. These mighty beasts, subsequently
known as walrusses or sea-horses, were found sometimes in swarms of two
hundred at a time, basking in the arctic sun, and seemed equally at home
on land, in the sea, and on icebergs. When aware of the approach of
their human visitors, they would slide off an iceblock into the water,
holding their cubs in their arms, and ducking up and down in the sea as
if in sport. Then tossing the young ones away, they would rush upon the
boats, and endeavour to sink the strangers, whom they instinctively
recognised as their natural enemies. Many were the severe combats
recorded by the diarist of that voyage of Barendz with the walrusses and
the bears.
The chief result of this first expedition was the geographical
investigation made, and, with unquestionable right; these earliest arctic
pilgrims bestowed the names of their choice upon the regions first
visited by themselves. According to the unfailing and universal impulse
on such occasions, the names dear to the fatherland were naturally
selected. The straits were called Nassau, the island at its mouth became
States or Staten Island; the northern coasts of Tartary received the
familiar appellations of New Holland, New Friesland, New Walcheren; while
the two rivers, beyond which Linschoten did not advance, were designated
Swan and Mercury respectively, after his two ships. Barendz, on his
part, had duly baptized every creek, bay, islet, and headland of Nova
Zembla, and assuredly Christian mariner had never taken the latitude of
77 deg. before. Yet the antiquary, who compares the maps soon afterwards
published by William Blaeuw with the charts now in familiar use, will
observe with indignation the injustice with which the early geographical
records have been defaced, and the names rightfully bestowed upon those
terrible deserts by their earliest discoverers rudely torn away. The
islands of Orange can still be recognized, and this is almost the only
vestige left of the whole nomenclature. But where are Cape Nassau,
William's Island, Admiralty Island, Cape Plancius, Black-hook, Cross-
hook, Bear's-hook, Ice-hook, Consolation-hook, Cape Desire, the Straits
of Nassau, Maurice Island, Staten Island, Enkhuizen Island, and many
other similar appellations.
The sanguine Linschoten, on his return, gave so glowing an account of the
expedition that Prince Maurice and Olden-Barneveld, and prominent members
of the States-General, were infected with his enthusiasm. He considered
the north-east passage to China discovered and the problem solved. It
would only be necessary to fit out another expedition on a larger scale
the next year, provide it with a cargo of merchandize suitable for the
China market, and initiate the direct polar-oriental trade without
further delay. It seems amazing that so incomplete an attempt to
overcome such formidable obstacles should have been considered a decided
success. Yet there is no doubt of the genuineness of the conviction by
which Linschoten was actuated. The calmer Barendz, and his friend and
comrade Gerrit de Veer, were of opinion that the philosopher had made
"rather a free representation" of the enterprise of 1594 and of the
prospects for the future.
Nevertheless, the general Government, acting on Linschoten's suggestion,
furnished a fleet of seven ships: two from Enkhuizen, two from Zeeland,
two from Amsterdam; and a yacht which was to be despatched homeward with
the news, so soon as the expedition should have passed through the
straits of Nassau, forced its way through the frozen gulf of Tartary,
doubled Cape Tabin, and turned southward on its direct course to China.
The sublime credulity which accepted Linschoten's hasty solution of the
polar enigma as conclusive was fairly matched by the sedateness with
which the authorities made the preparations for the new voyage. So
deliberately were the broadcloths, linens, tapestries, and other assorted
articles for this first great speculation to Cathay, via the North Pole,
stowed on board the fleet, that nearly half the summer had passed before
anchor was weighed in the Meuse. The pompous expedition was thus
predestined to an almost ridiculous failure. Yet it was in the hands of
great men, both on shore and sea. Maurice, Barneveld, and Maalzoon had
personally interested themselves in the details of its outfitting,
Linschoten sailed as chief commissioner, the calm and intrepid Barendz
was upper pilot of the whole fleet, and a man who was afterwards destined
to achieve an immortal name in the naval history of his country, Jacob
Heemskerk, was supercargo of the Amsterdam ship. In obedience to the
plans of Linschoten and of Maalzoon, the passage by way of the Waigats
was of course attempted. A landing was effected on the coast of Tartary.
Whatever geographical information could be obtained from such a source
was imparted by the wandering Samoyedes. On the 2nd of September a party
went ashore on Staten Island and occupied themselves in gathering some
glistening pebbles which the journalist of the expedition describes with
much gravity as a "kind of diamonds, very plentiful upon the island."
While two of the men were thus especially engaged in a deep hollow, one
of them found himself suddenly twitched from behind. "What are you
pulling at me for, mate?" he said, impatiently to his comrade as he
supposed. But his companion was a large, long, lean white bear, and in
another instant the head of the unfortunate diamond-gatherer was off and
the bear was sucking his blood. The other man escaped to his friends,
and together a party of twenty charged upon the beast. Another of the
combatants was killed and half devoured by the hungry monster before a
fortunate bullet struck him in the head. But even then the bear
maintained his grip upon his two victims, and it was not until his brains
were fairly beaten out with the butt end of a snaphance by the boldest of
the party that they were enabled to secure the bodies of their comrades
and give them a hurried kind of Christian burial. They flayed the bear
and took away his hide with them, and this, together with an ample supply
of the diamonds of Staten Island, was the only merchandize obtained upon
the voyage for which such magnificent preparations had been made. For,
by the middle of September, it had become obviously hopeless to attempt
the passage of the frozen sea that season, and the expedition returned,
having accomplished nothing. It reached Amsterdam upon the 18th of
November, 1595.
The authorities, intensely disappointed at this almost ridiculous result,
refused to furnish direct assistance to any farther attempts at arctic
explorations. The States-General however offered a reward of twenty-five
thousand florins to any navigators who might succeed in discovering the
northern passage, with a proportionate sum to those whose efforts in that
direction might be deemed commendable, even if not crowned with success.
Stimulated by the spirit of adventure and the love of science far more
than by the hope of gaining a pecuniary prize, the undaunted Barendz, who
was firm in the faith that a pathway existed by the north of Nova Zembla
and across the pole to farthest Ind, determined to renew the attempt the
following summer. The city of Amsterdam accordingly, early in the year
1596, fitted out two ships. Select crews of entirely unmarried men
volunteered for the enterprise. John Cornelisz van der Ryp, an
experienced sea-captain, was placed in charge of one of the vessels,
William Barendz was upper pilot of the other, and Heemskerk, "the man who
ever steered his way through ice or iron," was skipper and supercargo.
The ships sailed from the Vlie on the 18th May. The opinions of Peter
Plancius prevailed in this expedition at last; the main object of both
Ryp and Barendz being to avoid the fatal, narrow, ice-clogged Waigats.
Although identical in this determination, their views as to the
configuration of the land and sea, and as to the proper course to be
steered, were conflicting. They however sailed in company mainly in a
N.E. by N. direction, although Barendz would have steered much more to
the east.
On the 5th June the watch on deck saw, as they supposed, immense flocks
of white swans swimming towards the ships, and covering the sea as far as
the eye could reach. All hands came up to look at the amazing spectacle,
but the more experienced soon perceived that the myriads of swans were
simply infinite fields of ice, through which however they were able to
steer their course without much impediment, getting into clear sea beyond
about midnight, at which hour the sun was one degree above the horizon.
Proceeding northwards two days more they were again surrounded by ice,
and, finding the "water green as grass, they believed themselves to be
near Greenland." On the 9th June they discovered an island in latitude,
according to their observation, 74 deg. 30', which seemed about five
miles long. In this neighbourhood they remained four days, having on one
occasion a "great fight which lasted four glasses" with a polar bear, and
making a desperate attempt to capture him in order to bring him as a show
to Holland. The effort not being successful, they were obliged to take
his life to save their own; but in what manner they intended, had they
secured him alive, to provide for such a passenger in the long voyage
across the North Pole to China, and thence back to Amsterdam, did not
appear. The attempt illustrated the calmness, however, of those hardy
navigators. They left the island on the 13th June, having baptised it
Bear Island in memory of their vanquished foe, a name which was
subsequently exchanged for the insipid appellation of Cherry Island, in
honour of a comfortable London merchant who seven years afterwards sent a
ship to those arctic regions.
Six days later they saw land again, took the sun, and found their
latitude 80 deg. 11'. Certainly no men had ever been within less than
ten degrees of the pole before. On the longest day of the year they
landed on this newly discovered country, which they at first fancied to
be a part of Greenland. They found its surface covered with eternal
snow, broken into mighty glaciers, jagged with precipitous ice-peaks; and
to this land of almost perpetual winter, where the mercury freezes during
ten months in the year, and where the sun remains four months beneath the
horizon, they subsequently gave the appropriate and vernacular name of
Spitzbergen. Combats with the sole denizens of these hideous abodes,
the polar bears, on the floating ice, on the water, or on land, were
constantly occurring, and were the only events to disturb the monotony of
that perpetual icy sunshine, where no night came to relieve the almost
maddening glare. They rowed up a wide inlet on the western coast, and
came upon great numbers of wild-geese sitting on their eggs. They proved
to be the same geese that were in the habit of visiting Holland in vast
flocks every summer, and it had never before been discovered where they
laid and hatched their eggs. "Therefore," says the diarist of the
expedition, "some voyagers have not scrupled to state that the eggs grow
on trees in Scotland, and that such of the fruits of those trees as fall
into the water become goslings, while those which drop on the ground
burst in pieces and come to nothing. We now see that quite the contrary
is the case," continues De Veer, with perfect seriousness, "nor is it to
be wondered at, for nobody has ever been until now where those birds lay
their eggs. No man, so far as known, ever reached the latitude of eighty
degrees before. This land was hitherto unknown."
The scientific results of this ever-memorable voyage might be deemed
sufficiently meagre were the fact that the eggs of wild geese did not
grow on trees its only recorded discovery. But the investigations made
into the dread mysteries of the north, and the actual problems solved,
were many, while the simplicity of the narrator marks the infantine
character of the epoch in regard to natural history. When so illustrious
a mind as Grotius was inclined to believe in a race of arctic men whose
heads grew beneath their shoulders; the ingenuous mariner of Amsterdam
may be forgiven for his earnestness in combating the popular theory
concerning goslings.
On the 23rd June they went ashore again, and occupied themselves, as well
as the constant attacks of the bears would permit, in observing the
variation of the needle, which they ascertained to be sixteen degrees.
On the same day, the ice closing around in almost infinite masses, they
made haste to extricate themselves from the land and bore southwards
again, making Bear Island once more on the 1st July. Here Cornelius Ryp
parted company with Heemskerk and Barendz, having announced his intention
to sail northward again beyond latitude 80 deg. in search of the coveted
passage. Barendz, retaining his opinion that the true inlet to the
circumpolar sea, if it existed, would be found N.E. of Nova Zembla,
steered in that direction. On the 13th July they found themselves by
observation in latitude 73 deg., and considered themselves in the
neighbourhood of Sir Hugh Willoughby's land. Four days later they were
in Lomms' Bay, a harbour of Nova Zembla, so called by them from the
multitude of lomms frequenting it, a bird to which they gave the
whimsical name of arctic parrots. On the 20th July the ice obstructed
their voyage; covering the sea in all directions with floating mountains
and valleys, so that they came to an anchor off an islet where on a
former voyage the Hollanders had erected the precious emblem of Christian
faith, and baptised the dreary solitude Cross Island. But these
pilgrims, as they now approached the spot, found no worshippers there,
while, as if in horrible mockery of their piety, two enormous white bears
had reared themselves in an erect posture, in order the better to survey
their visitors, directly at the foot of the cross. The party which had
just landed were unarmed, and were for making off as fast as possible to
their boats. But Skipper Heemskerk, feeling that this would be death to
all of them, said simply, "The first man that runs shall have this boat-
hook of mine in his hide. Let us remain together and face them off." It
was done. The party moved slowly towards their boats, Heemskerlk
bringing up the rear, and fairly staring the polar monsters out of
countenance, who remained grimly regarding them, and ramping about the
cross.
The sailors got into their boat with much deliberation, and escaped to
the ship, "glad enough," said De Veer, "that they were alive to tell the
story, and that they had got out of the cat-dance so fortunately."
Next day they took the sun, and found their latitude 76 deg. 15', and the
variation of the needle twenty-six degrees.
For seventeen days more they were tossing about in mist and raging snow-
storms, and amidst tremendous icebergs, some of them rising in steeples
and pinnacles to a hundred feet above the sea, some grounded and
stationary, others drifting fearfully around in all directions,
threatening to crush them at any moment or close in about them and
imprison them for ever. They made fast by their bower anchor on the
evening of 7th August to a vast iceberg which was aground, but just as
they had eaten their supper there was a horrible groaning, bursting, and
shrieking all around them, an indefinite succession of awful, sounds
which made their hair stand on end, and then the iceberg split beneath
the water into more than four hundred pieces with a crash "such as no
words could describe." They escaped any serious damage, and made their
way to a vast steepled and towered block like a floating cathedral, where
they again came to anchor.
On the 15th August they reached the isles of Orange, on the extreme
north-eastern verge of Nova Zembla. Here a party going ashore climbed to
the top of a rising ground, and to their infinite delight beheld an open
sea entirely free from ice, stretching to the S. E. and E.S.E. as far
as eye could reach. At last the game was won, the passage to Cathay was
discovered. Full of joy, they pulled back in their boat to the ship,
"not knowing how to get there quick enough to tell William Barendz."
Alas! they were not aware of the action of that mighty ocean river, the
Gulf-stream, which was sweeping around those regions with its warm
dissolving current.
Three days later they returned baffled in their sanguine efforts to sail
through the open sea. The ice had returned upon them, setting
southwardly in obedience to the same impulse which for a moment had
driven it away, and they found themselves imprisoned again near the "Hook
of Desire."
On the 25th August they had given up all the high hopes by which they had
been so lately inspired, and, as the stream was again driving the ice
from the land, they trusted to sail southward and westward back towards
the Waigats. Having passed by Nova Zembla, and found no opening into the
seas beyond, they were disposed in the rapidly waning summer to effect
their retreat by the south side of the island, and so through the Straits
of Nassau home. In vain. The catastrophe was upon them. As they
struggled slowly past the "Ice-haven," the floating mountains and
glaciers, impelled by the mighty current, once more gathered around and
forced them back to that horrible harbour. During the remaining days of
August the ship struggled, almost like a living creature, with the perils
that, beset her; now rearing in the air, her bows propped upon mighty
blocks, till she absolutely sat erect upon her stern, now lying prostrate
on her side, and anon righting again as the ice-masses would for a moment
float away and leave her breathing space and room to move in. A blinding
snow-storm was raging the while, the ice was cracking and groaning in all
directions, and the ship was shrieking, so that the medley of awful
sights and sounds was beyond the power of language. "'Twas enough to
make the hair stand on end," said Gerrit de Veer, "to witness the hideous
spectacle."