Chapter XVI: Part 16

[11] _Con general aplauso de las gentes_--he says in the Second
Part of _Don Quixote_, speaking through the mouth of the Duchess.
The legend, revived in the present age, that _Don Quixote_ hung
fire on the first publication, and that the author wrote
anonymously a tract called _El Buscapie_ (The Search-foot), in
order to explain his story and its object, rests only upon the
evidence of one Ruidiaz, and is contradicted by all the facts of
the case. No such aid was necessary to push the sale of the book,
whose purpose had been sufficiently explained by the author in
his preface. The so-called _Buscapie_, published in 1848 by
Adolfo de Castro, is an impudent forgery, which has imposed upon
no one. It is the composition of Señor de Castro himself, who is
a _farceur_, of some wit and more effrontery. Ticknor is even too
serious in the attention which he bestows on Señor de Castro and
his work, which an English publisher has thought worthy of a
translation.

The proud and happy author himself spoke of his success with a frank complacency which, in any other man, would savor of vanity. Some seven or eight editions of _Don Quixote_ are supposed to have been printed in the first year, of which six are now extant--two of Madrid, two of Lisbon, and two of Valencia.[12] The number of copies issued from the press in one year was probably in excess of the number reached by any book since the invention of printing.[13] But though all Spain talked of _Don Quixote_ and read _Don Quixote_, and though the book brought him much fame, some consolation, and a few good friends, it does not appear to have helped to mend the fortunes of Cervantes in any material degree. In accordance with the usual dispensation, the author derived the least benefit from his success. Francisco Robles and Juan de la Cuesta, doubtless, made a good thing of it; but to Miguel de Cervantes there must have come but a small share of the profit. The laws of copyright were, in that age, little regarded; and it may be questioned whether, in a book published in Madrid, they could be enforced outside of Castile. The pirates and the wreckers were busy upon _Don Quixote_ from its very earliest appearance; and its quick and plentiful reproduction in all the chief cities, not only of Spain but of the outside Spanish dominions, though highly flattering to the author, could not have greatly helped to lighten his life of toil and penury.

[12] Señor Gayangos is of opinion that there were other editions
of 1605 which have wholly perished; one probably at Barcelona,
the press of which city was very active in that year; one at
Pamplona, and probably one at Saragossa, which were capitals of
old kingdoms. See also Señor Asensio's letter to the _Ateneo_,
No. 23, p. 296; and the Bibliography of _Don Quixote_ at the end
of this volume.

[13] The ordinary _obrada_, or impression, of a book at this
period, I am told by Señor Gayangos--and there can be no better
authority--was 250 copies. But in the case of a popular book like
_Don Quixote_ the impression would be larger--probably 500 copies.
Supposing 8 editions to have been issued in 1605, there would thus
have been printed 4,000 copies in the first year--a number
unprecedently large in an age when readers were few and books a
luxury.

Taking the object of _Don Quixote_ to be, what Cervantes declared it--"the causing of the false and silly books of chivalries to be abhorred by mankind"--no book was ever so successful. The doughtiest knight of romance never achieved an adventure so stupendous as that which Miguel de Cervantes undertook and accomplished. With his pen, keener than the lance of Esplandian or Felixmarte, he slew the whole herd of puissant cavaliers, of very valiant and accomplished lovers. Before him went down the Florisandros and Florisels, the Lisuartes and Lepolemos, the Primaleons and the Polindos, and the whole brood of the invincible. Scarcely a single romance was printed, and not one was written, after the date of the publication of _Don Quixote_.[14] Such a revolution in taste was never accomplished by any single writer, in any age or country.

[14] The last book of the kind written before _Don Quixote_,
according to Clemencin, was _Policisne de Boecia_, published in
1602; but _La Toledana Discreta_, which is a romantic poem in
_ottava rima_, was published in 1604, and a few chap-books and
religious romances, of the slighter kind, afterward.

A few words only are here needed, in the discussion of that question which has occupied so largely the ingenuity of writers, native and foreign, as to what was the object of Cervantes in writing _Don Quixote_. There are those who insist upon seeking in every work of humor or of wit some meaning other and deeper than in the book appears, as though it were impossible that an author should be disinterested or write merely out of the fulness of his heart or pride in his work. With Cervantes' own declaration, more than once repeated, of the purpose of his book the critics will not be content. So good a book must have had a better reason for being than Cervantes' dislike of the fantastic books of the later chivalry. Who, then, was the man--the original of Don Quixote? Against whom was the satire levelled? Of course nothing was then known to the world outside of poor Don Rodrigo de Pacheco, the Argamasillan _hidalgo_. Some great man Cervantes must have intended to ridicule. It was Charles V, said some. It was his son Philip, cried others--ignoring the absurdity of the Prudent one losing his wits through excessive reading of romances. It was the Duke of Lerma--or the Duke of Osuna--or some other great man, or Cervantes' wife's cousin, who opposed his marriage with Catalina. It was Ignatius Loyola--our own countryman, the good John Bowle, suggested.

Surely these various theories are a little far-fetched and not a little grotesque and absurd. What there is in either of the two Spanish monarchs to liken him to the Knight of La Mancha it is difficult to see. Those who have looked upon that wonderful equestrian picture of Titian's in the Museo at Madrid, with its weird, weary, far-off expression, are irresistibly led to think of Don Quixote; but the converse is by no means so clear that on looking at Don Quixote we are tempted to think of that most unromantic of monarchs, Carlos Quinto.[15] His son is still more unlike his supposed portrait. As to the Duke of Lerma, they who can believe, on the faith of the cock-and-bull stories told by the Abbé Lenglet du Fresnoy and the Jesuit Rapin, that Cervantes satirized the all-powerful minister in revenge for personal injuries suffered at his hands, may be consigned to the same limbo with the believers in the Bacon-Shakespeare. The theory about Loyola, first mooted by Bowle, the English commentator, is of all, perhaps, not the least absurd. The one shred by which it hangs is a passage in _Don Quixote_ where the angry Biscayan, the adversary of Don Quixote, is made a native of Azpeitia--this being the name of the obscure village where Loyola was born.

[15] The question is reopened in the _España Moderna_ (1894), by
my good friend Asensio, who quotes from one of the histories of
Charles V how that as a youth he would draw his sword and lay about
him at the figures in the tapestry, and how once he was discovered
teasing a caged lion with a stick. This is slender material on
which to base the theory of Charles V being the original of Don
Quixote.

A sufficient answer to all these theories is that contained in the book itself. Surely no one has read _Don Quixote_ with profit to himself who has been unable to see that the hero is not one whom the author desired to revile or to malign. Never was a satire like this, which leaves us full of love and sympathy for the object. And why cannot we believe the author when he avers that never did his humble pen stoop to satire? He meant, of course, the satire of persons as distinguished from the reprehension and the ridicule of human follies and general vices. As a lampoon, _Don Quixote_ could hardly have endured to this day. The spirit which has given it eternal life is love, and not hate.

To estimate the worth of the service performed by Cervantes--not in abolishing romance, as has been absurdly said, still less in discrediting chivalry, as with even a more perverse misconception of his purpose has been suggested, but in purging books of fiction of their grossness and their extravagance, and restoring romance to truth and to nature--we have to consider the enormous influence exercised by this pernicious literature over the minds of the people of Spain in the sixteenth century.

The ceaseless wars with the Moors had trained the whole manhood of the nation to soldiership. The trade of fighting was familiar to every man of good birth, so that the word for "knight" (_caballero_) came to be synonymous with that for "gentleman." The constant exercise in arms made of chivalry, in Spain, a more solemn and serious calling than elsewhere. As a native writer says, with equal point and spirit, there was developed by the chronic war with the Moor a _caballerismo_--there is none but a Spanish word for a quality purely indigenous--essentially distinct from the gay, fantastic chivalry of the North. It extended to all classes of the people. It was not confined to the aristocracy. "Every Spaniard was a warrior, every warrior a noble, and every noble a knight of his country."[16] They had not to go far to seek for adventures. They had the Paynim at home: Mahound and Termagaunt were at their doors. There was a constant supply at hand of men of the wrong faith and alien habits--the delight in fighting whom was enhanced by the fact that they equally were possessed of the chivalric fervor, and, though Moors and misbelievers, gentlemen still and cavaliers.[17] The long and desperate struggle for existence evolved the highest qualities of the race. And small wonder it was that out of that fruitful soil which had grown the Cid and the warriors of the heroic age, who should be rightly classed as prechivalric, there sprung up that ranker produce, the knights-errant. Of these, the seekers after adventure, the bohemians of the knightly order, Spain, as her native historians boast, was the teeming mother. No other country in that age, or in the previous one, could show the world such a scene as that gravely enacted before King Juan II and his court, when eighty knights ran a-tilt with each other, and incurred serious loss of limb and permanent injury to their persons, in order that one of them might fulfil a fantastic vow made to his mistress.[18]

[16] See the eloquent and judicious prologue to his _Romancero
General_ by Don Agustin Duran.

[17] "Caballeros granadinos,
Aunque Moros, hijos d'algo."

[18] See the account of the Paso Honroso, held at the instance of
Suero de Quiñones, before Juan II, in 1434, at the bridge of
Orbigo, near Leon, which is contained in Appendix D, vol. i, of my
translation of _Don Quixote_.

Knight-errantry, which was a caprice in France and in England, in Spain was a calling. No other country could afford such a field for it, and to no other society was it so well suited. The grave and wise Fernando de Pulgar, the counsellor and chronicler of Ferdinand and Isabella, speaks with complacency of the noblemen he knew who had gone into foreign countries in search of adventures, "so as to gain honor for themselves, and the fame of valiant and hardy knights for the gentlemen of Castile"--boasting that there were more Spanish knights of the errant sort than of any other nation.

The romance of chivalry was the natural growth of this fashion of knight-errantry; and, like its parent, flourished nowhere so luxuriantly as in Spain. _Amadis Of Gaul_ and _Belianis Of Greece_ are, in fact, as much "racy of the soil" as _Don Quixote_ itself.

There were some simple or devout enough to take the romance for a gospel, who believed in Amadis as much as in any other hero or saint. In the _Arte de Galanteria_, written by Francisco de Portugal about the close of the sixteenth century, it is mentioned that a Portuguese poet, Simon de Silveira, once swore upon the Evangelists that he believed the whole of _Amadis_ to be true history. This is capped by another story in the same book of how a certain knight came home from hunting and found his wife and daughters dissolved in tears. Asking them what was the matter--whether any child or relation was dead--they said "No; but Amadis is dead!" They had come to the 174th chapter of _Lisuarte of Greece_, where the old Amadis finally dies.

The influence of the _Palmerins_ and of the Carlovingian romances, which form a class by themselves, was scarcely inferior to that of _Amadis_. _Palmerin of England_ himself, the patriarch of the family--that "Palm of England," as Cervantes calls him--may be placed second to his rival in merit. The difference in spirit is great between the two; for _Amadis_ really is, though in its present form of the fifteenth, of the fourteenth century, when chivalry was in its early prime; and _Palmerin_ was not written till the sixteenth century, when the true ideal of knighthood had already been dimmed by the lust of gold-seeking and religious adventure. Southey, perhaps, ranks _Palmerin_ too high in the literary scale by placing it on a level with _Amadis_, and averring that he knew "no romance and no epic in which suspense is so successfully kept up." Of their successors, the long line of sons, grandsons and nephews, each more valiant and puissant than the last, it must be said that they are as scant of beauty as of grace. In order to keep up the interest of their readers, the authors of the Primaleons and the Polindos--the Florisels and the Florisandos--were compelled to put in wonders on an ascending scale; to pile up adventure upon adventure; to make the dragons fiercer, the giants huger, the fighting more terrible, and the slaughter more bloody. The popular appetite, which craved for more and more excitement with every successive stimulant, could only be fed by inventions so monstrous that it is a wonder the stomach of the readers of romances of chivalry did not reject the nauseous aliment. Yet there is no evidence of any decline in the production of these books up to the date of the appearance of _Don Quixote_.

It was to do battle with this brood of fabled monsters, against whom the pulpit and the parliament had preached and legislated in vain, that Cervantes took up his pen. The adventure was one reserved for his single arm; and it was achieved with a completeness of success such as must have astonished our hero himself, as we know by many signs that it disgusted and irritated many of his literary rivals. The true nature of the service performed, as well as Cervantes' motive in undertaking it, has been greatly misrepresented. Nothing can be more certain than that his aim in _Don Quixote_ was, primarily, to correct the prevailing false taste in literature. What moral and social results followed were the necessary consequences of the employment of his rare wit and humor on such a work. There is no reason to believe that Cervantes, at first, had any more serious intention than that which he avowed, namely, to give "a pastime to melancholy souls"[19] in destroying "the authority and influence which the books of chivalries have in the world and over the vulgar." That he was not impelled to this work by any antipathy to knightly romances as such--still less by any ambition to repress the spirit of chivalry, or to purge the commonwealth of social and political abuses--is abundantly proved by the whole tenor of his book, if not by the evidence of his life. His own tastes strongly inclined him to books of romance. Perhaps no one in that age had read more of those books, or was so deeply imbued with their spirit.

[19] See the _Viaje del Parnaso_, chapter iv:

"Y he dado en _Don Quixote_ pasatiempo
Al pecho melancolico y mohino
En cualquiera sazon, en todo tiempo."

("And I am he in _Quixote_ who has given
A pastime for the melancholy soul
In every age, and all time and season.")

Why cannot we believe the author, when he thus plainly and candidly
avows his purpose?

The opinion of an acute Spanish writer, Don Vicente de Salva, on this point we hold to be a very sensible one--"Cervantes did not intend to satirize the substance and essence of books of chivalries, but only to purge away their follies and impossibilities." What is _Don Quixote_ itself, it is shrewdly added, but a romance of chivalry, "which has ruined the fortunes of its predecessors by being so immensely in advance of them"?[20] What was Cervantes' own last book, as we shall presently show, but in some kind a romance of chivalry--not free, alas! from some of the very errors he had himself burlesqued? Nay, what was Cervantes' own life but a romance of chivalry?

[20] See the essay of Salva's in Ochoa, _Apuntes para una
Biblioteca_, vol. ii, pp. 723-740. I know one great Spanish scholar
who has never forgiven Cervantes for destroying the books of
chivalries. But his anger is rather that of the bibliographer than
of the critic or patriot. He has the best collection of those evil
books in Europe.

That, after all, the overthrow of the books of chivalries was but a small part of the good work which Cervantes performed in _Don Quixote_ is only to say that, like all great writers, he "builded better than he knew." The pen of the genius, as Heine says, is ever greater than the man himself. Rejecting all the many subtle and ingenious theories as to what was Cervantes' object in writing his book; that it was a crusade against enthusiasm, as even Heine seems to suspect; that it was a missionary tract, intended to destroy popery and throw down antichrist, as some, even bearded men, have dared to suggest; that it was a programme of advanced liberalism artfully veiled under a mask of levity, and, indeed, the forerunner of that gospel of sentimental cosmopolitanism since preached by other eminent persons supposed to resemble Cervantes in their characters or Don Quixote in their careers--I hold that the author wrote but out of the fulness of his own heart, giving us, by a happy impulse, a fable in which are transparently figured his own character, his own experiences, and his own sufferings. What is the key but this to the mystery which makes this book, on a purely local subject of passing interest, the book of humanity for all time--as popular out of Spain as among Spaniards? A mere burlesque would have died with the books which it killed. A satire survives only so long as the person or the thing satirized is remembered. But _Don Quixote_ lives, and, by a miracle of genius, keeps _Amadis_ and _Palmerin_ alive.

The invention is the most simple, as it is the most original, in literature. From _Don Quixote_ dates an epoch in the art of fiction. For once Cervantes was happy in his opportunity. And what is the secret of his success? It is that this "child of his sterile, ill-cultured wit" is no creature of pure fancy, but fashioned in the very likeness of its parent, drawn out of his life, shaped after his pattern--an image of its creator. How could Cervantes' romance fail of holding the field against all the romances? It was his own life from which he drew--that life which had been a true knight-errantry. The hero himself, the enthusiast, nursed on visions of chivalry, who is ever mocked by fortune; the reviver of the old knighthood, who is buffeted by clowns and made sport of by the baser sort; who, in spite of the frequent blows, jeers, reverses, and indignities he receives, never ceases to command our love and sympathy--who is he but the man of Lepanto himself, whose life is a romance at least as various, eventful, and arduous; as full of hardships, troubles, and sadness; as prolific of surprising adventures and strange accidents, as the immortal story he has written? This is the key to _Don Quixote_, which, unless we use, we shall not reach to the heart of the mystery.

EARLIEST POSITIVE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA

A.D. 1606

LOUIS BECKE AND WALTER JEFFERY

As shown by the authors of the following account, there is no lack of
evidence that it was belief in a great southern land which led early
geographers and sailors to belief in the existence of the Australian
continent. Notwithstanding this, it is held by some students of the
subject to be doubtful whether the first navigators who reached the
shores of Australia set out with any expectation of discovering a
great land in the south.

Whether this was the case or not, it is argued that the earliest
achievements in that quarter were either of no definite consequence
or were imperfectly estimated by those who made or promoted the
discoveries in connection with which not even their names have been
preserved.

The narrative of Becke and Jeffery, with its references to other
leading authorities, furnishes the completest and most recent
information on this subject available within the compass of a
reasonably brief survey.

Learned geographers have gone back to very remote times, even to the Middle Ages, and, by the aid of old maps, have set up ingenious theories showing that the Australian continent was then known to explorers. Some evidence had been adduced of a French voyage in which the continent was discovered in the youth of the sixteenth century, and, of course, it has been asserted that the Chinese were acquainted with the land long before Europeans ventured to go so far afloat. There is strong evidence that the west coast of Australia was touched by the Spanish and the Portuguese during the first half of the sixteenth century, and proof of its discovery early in the seventeenth century. At the time of these very early South Sea voyages the search, it should always be remembered, was for a great antarctic continent. The discovery of islands in the Pacific was, to the explorers, a matter of minor importance; New Guinea, although visited by the Portuguese in 1526, up to the time of Captain Cook was supposed by Englishmen to be a part of the mainland; and the eastern coast of Australia, though touched upon earlier and roughly outlined upon maps, remained unknown to them until Cook explored it.

_Early Voyages to Australia_, by R.H. Major, printed by the Hakluyt Society in 1859, is still the best collection of facts, and contains the soundest deductions from them on the subject, and although ably written books have since been published, the industrious authors have added little or nothing in the way of indisputable evidence to that collected by Major. The belief in the existence of the Australian continent grew gradually and naturally out of a belief in a great southern land. G.B. Barton, in an introduction to his valuable Australian history, traces this from 1578, when Frobisher wrote:

"Terra Australis seemeth to be a great, firm land, lying under and about the south pole, being in many places a fruitful soil, and is not yet thoroughly discovered, but only seen and touched on the north edge thereof by the travel of the Portiugales and Spaniards in their voyages to their East and West Indies. It is included almost by a parallel, passing at 40 degrees in south latitude, yet in some places it reacheth into the sea with great promontories, even into the tropic Capricornus. Only these parts are best known, as over against Capo d'buona Speranza (where the Portiugales see popinjayes commonly of a wonderful greatness), and again it is known at the south side of the Straight of Magellanies, and is called Terra del Fuego. It is thought this south land, about the pole Antarctic, is far bigger than the north land about the pole Arctic; but whether it be so or not, we have no certain knowledge, for we have no particular description thereof, as we have of the land under and about the north pole."

Then Purchas, in 1578, says: "This land about the Straits is not perfectly discovered, whether it be continent or islands. Some take it for continent, and extend it more in their imagination than any man's experience toward those islands of Saloman and New Guinea, esteeming (of which there is great probability) that Terra Australis, or the Southern Continent, may for the largeness thereof take a first place in order and the first in greatness in the division and parting of the Whole World."

The most important of the Spanish voyages was that made by De Quiros, who left Callao in December, 1605, in charge of an expedition of three ships. One of these vessels was commanded by Luis Vaez de Torres. De Quiros, who is believed to have been by birth a Portuguese, discovered several island groups and many isolated islands, among the former being the New Hebrides, which he, believing he had found the continent, named Tierra Australis del Espiritu Santo. Soon after, the ships commanded by De Quiros became separated from the other vessels, and Torres took charge. He subsequently found that the land seen was an island group, and so determined to sail westward in pursuance of the scheme of exploration. In about the month of August he fell in with a chain of islands--now called the Louisiade Archipelago and included in the British possession of New Guinea--which he thought, reasonably enough, was the beginning of New Guinea, but which really lies a little to the southeast of that great island. As he could not weather the group, he bore away to the southward, and his subsequent proceedings are here quoted from Burney's _Voyages_:

"We went along three hundred leagues of coast, as I have mentioned,
and diminished the latitude 2-1/2 degrees, which brought us into 9
degrees. From thence we fell in with a bank of from 3 to 9 fathoms,
which extends along the coast to 7-1/2 south latitude; and the end of
it is in 5 degrees. We could go no further on for the many shoals and
great currents, so we were obliged to sail south-west in that depth
to 11 degrees south latitude. There is all over it an archipelago of
islands, without number, by which we passed; and at the end of the
eleventh degree the bank became shoaler. Here were very large
islands, and they appeared more to the southward. They were inhabited
by black people, very corpulent and naked. Their arms were lances,
arrows, and clubs of stone ill-fashioned. We could not get any of
their arms. We caught in all this land twenty persons of different
nations, that with them we might be able to give a better account to
your Majesty. They give (us) much notice of other people, although as
yet they do not make themselves well understood. We were upon this
bank two months, at the end of which time we found ourselves in
twenty-five fathoms and 5 degrees south latitude and ten leagues from
the coast; and having gone 480 leagues here, the coast goes to the
north-east. I did not search it, for the bank became very shallow. So
we stood to the north."

The "very large islands" seen by Torres were, no doubt, the hills of Cape York, the northernmost point of Australia, and so he, all unconsciously, had passed within sight of the continent for which he was searching. A copy of the report by Torres was lodged in the archives of Manila; and when the English took that city in 1762, Dalrymple, the celebrated geographer, discovered it, and gave the name of Torres Straits to what is now well known as the dangerous passage dividing New Guinea from Australia. De Quiros, in his ship, made no further discovery. He arrived on the Mexican coast in October, 1606, and did all he could to induce Philip III of Spain to sanction further exploration, but without success.

Of the voyages of the Dutch in Australian waters much interesting matter is available. Major sums up the case in these words: "The entire period up to the time of Dampier, ranging over two centuries, presents these two phases of obscurity: that in the sixteenth century--the period of the Portuguese and Spanish discoveries--there are indications on maps of the great probability of Australia having already been discovered, but with no written documents to confirm them; while in the seventeenth century there is documentary evidence that its coasts were touched upon or explored by a considerable number of Dutch voyagers, but the documents immediately describing these voyages have not been found."

The period of known Dutch discovery begins with the establishment of the Dutch East India Company, and a knowledge of the west coast of Australia grew with the growth of the Dutch colonies, but grew slowly, for the Dutchmen were too busy trading to risk ships and spend time and money upon scientific voyages.

In January, 1644, Commodore Abel Janszoon Tasman was despatched upon his second voyage of discovery to the South Seas, and his instructions, signed by the Governor-General of Batavia, Antonio van Diemen, begin with a recital of all previous Dutch voyages of a similar character. From this document an interesting summary of Dutch exploration can be made. Tasman, in his first voyage, had discovered the island of Van Diemen, which he named after the then Governor of Batavia, but which has since been named Tasmania, after its discoverer. During this first voyage the navigator also discovered New Zealand, passed round the east side of Australia without seeing the land, and on his way home sailed along the northern shore of New Guinea.

But to come back to the summary of Dutch voyages found in Tasman's instructions: During 1605 and 1606 the Dutch yacht Duyphen made two exploring voyages to New Guinea. On one trip, the commander, after coasting New Guinea, steered southward along the islands on the west side of Torres Straits to that part of Australia, a little to the west and south of Cape York, marked on modern maps as Duyphen Point, thus unconsciously--for he thought himself still on the west coast of New Guinea--making the first authenticated discovery of the continent.

Dirk Hartog, in command of the Endragt, while on his way from Holland to the East Indies, put into what Dampier afterward called Shark's Bay, and on an island, which now bears his name, deposited a tin plate with an inscription recording his arrival, and dated October 25, 1616. The plate was afterward found by a Dutch navigator in 1697, and replaced by another, which, in its turn, was discovered in July, 1801, by Captain Hamelin, of the Naturaliste, on the well-known French voyage in search of the ill-fated La Perouse. The Frenchman copied the inscription, and nailed the plate to a post, with another recording his own voyage. These inscriptions were a few years later removed by De Freycinet, and deposited in the museum of the Institute of Paris. Hartog ran along the coast a few degrees, naming the land after his ship, and was followed by many other voyagers at frequent intervals down to the year 1727, from which time Dutch exploration has no more a place in Australian discovery.

During the one hundred twenty-two years of which we have records of their voyages, although the Dutch navigators' work, compared with that done by Cook and his successors, was of small account, yet, considering the state of nautical science, and that the ships were for the most part Dutch East Indiamen, the Dutch names which still sprinkle the north and the west coasts of the continent show that from Cape York in the extreme north, westward of the great Australian Bight in the south, the Dutchmen had touched at intervals the whole coast line.

But before leaving the Dutch period there are one or two voyages that, either on account of their interesting or important character, deserve brief mention. In 1623 Arnhem's Land, now the northern district of the northern territory of South Australia, was discovered by the Dutch yachts Pesa and Arnhem. This voyage is also noteworthy on account of the massacre of the master of the Arnhem and eight of his crew by the natives while they were exploring the coast of New Guinea. In 1627 the first discovery of the south coast was made by the Gulde Zeepard, and the land then explored, extending from Cape Leeuwin to the Nuyts Archipelago, on the South Australian coast, was named after Peter Nuyts, then on board the ship on his way to Batavia, whence he was sent to Japan as ambassador from Holland.

In the year 1628 a colonizing expedition of eleven vessels left Holland for the Dutch East Indies. Among these ships was the Batavia, commanded by Francis Pelsart. A terrible storm destroyed ten of the fleet, and on June 4, 1629, the Batavia was driven ashore on the reef still known as Houtman's Abrolhos, which had been discovered and named by a Dutch East Indiaman some years earlier--probably by the commander of the Leeuwin, who discovered and named after his ship the cape at the southwest point of the continent. The Batavia, which carried a number of chests of silver money, went to pieces on the reef. The crew of the ship managed to land upon the rocks, and saved some food from the wreck, but they were without water. Pelsart, in one of the ship's boats, spent a couple of weeks in exploring the inhospitable coast in the neighborhood, in the hope of discovering water, but found so little that he ultimately determined to attempt to make Batavia and from there bring succor to his ship's company. On July 3d he fell in with a Dutch ship off Java and was taken on to Batavia. From there he obtained help and returned to the wreck, arriving at the Abrolhos in the middle of September; but during the absence of the commander the castaways had gone through a terrible experience, which is related in Therenot's _Recueil de Voyages curieux_, and translated into English in Major's book, from which the following is extracted:

"While Pelsart is soliciting assistance, I will return to those of
the crew who remained on the island; but I should first inform you
that the supercargo, named Jerome Cornelis, formerly an apothecary at
Haarlem, had conspired with the pilot and some others, when off the
coast of Africa, to obtain possession of the ship and take her to
Dunkirk, or to avail themselves of her for the purpose of piracy.
This supercargo remained upon the wreck ten days after the vessel had
struck, having discovered no means of reaching the shore. He even
passed two days upon the mainmast, which floated, and, having from
thence got upon a yard, at length gained the land. In the absence of
Pelsart, he became commander, and deemed this a suitable occasion for
putting his original design into execution, concluding that it would
not be difficult to become master of that which remained of the
wreck, and to surprise Pelsart when he should arrive with the
assistance which he had gone to Batavia to seek, and afterward to
cruise in these seas with his vessel. To accomplish this it was
necessary to get rid of those of the crew who were not of his party;
but before inbruing his hands with blood he caused his accomplices to
sign a species of compact, by which they promised fidelity one to
another. The entire crew was divided (living upon) between three
islands; upon that of Cornelis, which they had named the graveyard of
Batavia, was the greatest number of men.

"One of them, by name Weybehays, a lieutenant, had been despatched to
another island to seek for water, and having discovered some after a
search of twenty days he made the preconcerted signal by lighting
three fires, but in vain, for they were not noticed by the people of
Cornelis' company, the conspirators having during that time murdered
those who were not of their party. Of these they killed thirty or
forty. Some few saved themselves upon pieces of wood, which they
joined together, and, going in search of Weybehays, informed him of
the horrible massacre that had taken place.

"Having with him forty-five men, he resolved to keep upon his guard,
and to defend himself from their assassins if they should make an
attack upon his company, which in effect they designed to do, and to
treat the other party in the same manner; for they feared lest their
company, or that which remained upon the third island, should inform
the commander upon his arrival, and thus prevent the execution of
their design. They succeeded easily with the party last mentioned,
which was the weakest, killing the whole of them, excepting seven
children and some women. They hoped to succeed as easily with
Weybehays' company, and in the mean while broke open the chests of
merchandise which had been saved from the vessel. Jerome Cornelis
caused clothing to be made for his company out of the rich stuffs
which he found therein, choosing to himself a bodyguard, each of whom
he clothed in scarlet, embroidered with gold and silver. Regarding
the women as part of the spoil, he took one for himself, and gave one
of the daughters of the minister to a principal member of his party,
abandoning the other three for public use. He drew up also certain
rules for the future conduct of his men.

"After these horrible proceedings he caused himself to be elected
captain-general by a document which he compelled all his companions
to sign. He afterward sent twenty-two men in two shallops to destroy
the company of Weybehays, but they met with a repulse. Taking with
him thirty-seven men, he went himself against Weybehays, who received
him at the water's edge as he disembarked, and forced him to retire,
although the lieutenant and his men had no weapons but clubs, the
ends of which were armed with spikes.

"Finding force unavailing, the mutineer had recourse to other means.
He proposed a treaty of peace, the chaplain, who remained with
Weybehays, drawing up the conditions. It was agreed to with this
proviso, that Weybehays' company should remain unmolested, and they,
upon their part, agreed to deliver up a little boat in which one of
the sailors had escaped from the island where Cornelis was located to
that of Weybehays, receiving in return some stuffs for clothing his
people. During his negotiations Cornelis wrote to certain French
soldiers who belonged to the lieutenant's company, offering to each a
sum of money to corrupt them, with the hope that with this assistance
he might easily compass his design. His letters, which were without
effect, were shown to Weybehays, and Cornelis, who was ignorant of
their disclosure, having arrived the next day with three or four
others to find Weybehays and bring him the apparel, the latter caused
him to be attacked, killed two or three of the company, and took
Cornelis himself prisoner. One of them, by name Wouterlos, who
escaped from this rout, returned the following day to renew the
attack, but with little success.

"Pelsart arrived during these occurrences in the frigate Sardam. As
he approached the wreck he observed smoke from a distance, a
circumstance that afforded him great consolation, since he perceived
by it that his people were not all dead. He cast anchor, and threw
himself immediately into a skiff with bread and wine, and proceeded
to land on one of the islands. Nearly at the same time a boat came
alongside with four armed men. Weybehays, who was one of the four,
informed him of the massacre, and advised him to return as speedily
as possible to his vessel, for that the conspirators designed to
surprise him, having already murdered twenty-five persons, and to
attack him with two shallops, adding that he himself had that morning
been at close quarters with them. Pelsart perceived at the time the
two shallops coming toward him, and had scarcely got on board his
vessel before they came alongside.

"He was surprised to see the people covered with embroidery of gold
and silver, and weapons in their hands, and demanded of them why they
approached the vessel armed. They replied that they would inform him
when they came on board. He commanded them to cast their arms into
the sea or otherwise he would sink them. Finding themselves compelled
to submit, they threw away their weapons, and, being ordered on
board, were immediately placed in irons. One of them, named Jan de
Bremen, confessed that he had put to death or assisted in the
assassination of twenty-seven persons. The same evening Weybehays
brought his prisoner on board.

"On September 18th the captain and the master pilot, taking with them
ten men of Weybehays' company, passed over in boats to the island of
Cornelis. Those who still remained thereon lost all courage as soon
as they saw them, and allowed themselves to be placed in irons."

Pelsart remained another week at the Abrolhos, endeavoring to recover some of the Batavia's treasure, and succeeded in finding all but one chest. The mutineers were tried by the officers of the Sardam, and all but two were executed before the ship left the scene of their awful crime. The two men who were not hanged were put on shore on the mainland, and were probably the first Europeans to end their lives upon the continent. Dutch vessels for many years afterward sought for traces of the marooned seamen, but none was ever discovered.

The 1644 voyage of Tasman was made expressly for the purpose of exploring the north and northwestern shores of the continent, and to prove the existence or otherwise of straits separating it from New Guinea. Tasman's instructions show this, and prove that while the existence of the straits was suspected, and although Torres had unconsciously passed through them, they were not known. Tasman explored a long length of coast line, establishing its continuity from the extreme northwestern point, Arnhem Land, as far as the twenty-second degree of south latitude, Exmouth Gulf. He failed to prove the existence of Torres Straits; but to him, it is generally agreed, is due the discovery and naming of the Gulf of Carpentaria--Carpenter, in Tasman's time, being president at Amsterdam of the Dutch East India Company--and the naming of a part of North Australia, as he had previously named the island to the south, after Van Diemen. From this voyage dates the name "New Holland." The great stretch of coast lines embracing his discoveries became known to his countrymen as Hollandia Nova, a name which, in its English form, was adopted for the whole continent, and remained until it was succeeded by the more euphonious name of Australia. Tasman continued doing good service for the Dutch East India Company until his death, about 1659, at Batavia.

SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA

CHARTER UNDER WHICH AMERICA WAS COLONIZED

A.D. 1607

R. R. HOWISON

As the first of the original English colonies in North America,
Virginia enjoys a primacy in our history which, however other
sectional claims may be contested, is beyond dispute. The name
Virginia, which in 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh gave to his settlement on
the Carolina coast, at first covered an indefinite extent of the
great central territory of the continent.

After the failure and disappearance of Raleigh's colony, no further
attempts were made to settle the region until 1606, when new interest
in American colonization had been aroused in England. The credit for
awakening this interest is given to Bartholomew Gosnold, an English
navigator who, in 1602, sailed directly west and in May reached Cape
Cod. Then, coasting along New England, he found and named Martha's
Vineyard, and in July returned to England.

English adventurers were so much impressed with his enthusiastic
reports and his arguments in favor of new endeavors to occupy western
lands, that they began to urge a fresh undertaking. Gosnold's views
were strongly supported by the geographer Richard Hakluyt, "to whom
America owes a heavy debt of gratitude." There were numerous offers
of money and service, and when application was made to King James I
he was quite ready to sanction the project. He is said to have
thought of the profits that might return to him and also of the
satisfaction to be found in being rid of the "turbulent spirits" sure
to be drawn into the enterprise.

On April 10, 1606, James I issued a patent to Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, Richard Hakluyt, and others with them associated, under which they proposed to embark upon their eagerly sought scheme. This royal grant deserves our close attention, as it will explain the nature of the enterprise and the powers originally enjoyed by those who entered upon it.

Selecting for the scene of operations the beautiful belt of country lying between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth parallels of north latitude, the King certainly provided an ample field for the success of the patentees. This tract extends from Cape Fear to Halifax, and embraces all the lands between its boundaries in North America, except perhaps the French settlement in Arcadia, which had already been so far matured as to come under the excluding clause of the patent. For colonizing this extensive region the King appointed two companies of adventurers--the first consisting of noblemen, knights, gentlemen, and others in and about the city of London, which, through all its subsequent modifications, was known by the title of the London Company; the other consisted of knights, gentlemen, merchants, and others in and about the town of Plymouth, and was known as the Plymouth Company, though its operations were never extensive and were at last utterly fruitless.

To the London adventurers was granted exclusive right to all the territory lying between the thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth parallels and running from the ocean to an indefinite extent westward into the wilds of America, even to the waters of the Pacific. They were also allowed all the islands, fisheries, and other marine treasures within one hundred miles directly eastward from their shores and within fifty miles from their most northern and most southern settlements, following the coast to the northeast or southwest, as might be necessary. Within these limits ample jurisdiction was conferred upon them. To the Plymouth Company were granted in like manner the land and appurtenances between the forty-first and forty-fifth parallels. Thus the whole region between thirty-eight and forty-one was left open to the enterprise of both companies; but to render angry collision impossible, the charter contained the judicious clause above noted, by which each colony might claim exclusive right fifty miles north or south of its extreme settlements, and thus neither could approach within one hundred miles of the other.

The hope of gold and silver from America was yet clinging with tenacity to the English mind. James grants to the companies unlimited right to dig and obtain the precious and other metals, but reserves to himself one-fifth of all the gold and silver and one-fifteenth of all the copper that might be discovered. Immediately after this clause we find a section granting to the councils for the colonies authority to coin money and use it among the settlers and natives. This permission may excite some surprise when we remember that the right to coin has been always guarded with peculiar jealousy by English monarchs, and that this constituted one serious charge against the Massachusetts colony in the unjust proceedings by which her charter was wrested from her in subsequent years.

To the companies was given power to carry settlers to Virginia and plant them upon her soil, and no restriction was annexed to this authority except that none should be taken from the realm upon whom the King should lay his injunction to remain. The colonists were permitted to have arms and to resist and repel all intruders from foreign states; and it was provided that none should trade and traffic within the colonies unless they should pay or agree to pay to the treasurers of the companies 2½ per cent, on their stock in trade if they were English subjects, and 5 per cent, if they were aliens. The sums so paid were to be appropriated to the company for twenty-one years from the date of the patent, and afterward were transferred to the crown. James never forgot a prospect for gain, and could not permit the colonists to enjoy forever the customs which, as consumers of foreign goods, they must necessarily have paid from their resources.

The jealous policy which at this time forbade the exportation, without license, of English products to foreign countries, has left its impress upon this charter. The colonists were, indeed, allowed to import all "sufficient shipping and furniture of armour, weapons, ordinance, powder, victual, and all other things necessary," without burdensome restraint; but it was provided that if any goods should be shipped from England or her dependencies "with pretence" to carry them to Virginia, and should afterward be conveyed to foreign ports, the goods there conveyed and the vessel containing them should be absolutely forfeited to his majesty, his heirs and successors.

The lands held in the colonies were to be possessed by their holders under the most favorable species of tenure known to the laws of the mother-country. King James had never admired the military tenure entailed upon England by the feudal system, and he had made a praiseworthy though unsuccessful effort to reduce them all to the form of "free and common soccage," a mode of holding land afterward carried into full effect under Charles II, and which, if less pervaded by the knightly spirit of feudal ages, was more favorable to the holder and more congenial with the freedom of the English constitution. This easy tenure was expressly provided for the lands of the new country; and it is a happy circumstance that America has been little affected even by the softened bonds thus early imposed upon her.

But how shall these colonial subjects be governed? and from whom shall they derive their laws? These were questions to which the vanity and the arbitrary principles of the King soon found a reply. Two councils were to be provided, one for each colony, and each consisting of thirteen members. They were to govern the colonists according to such laws, ordinances, and instructions as should afterward be given by the King himself, under his sign manual and the privy seal of the realm of England; and the members of the council were to be "ordained, made, and removed from time to time," as the same instructions should direct. In addition to these provincial bodies a council of thirteen, likewise appointed by the King, was to be created in England, to which was committed the general duty of superintending the affairs of both colonies.

And to prove the pious designs of a monarch whose religion neither checked the bigotry of his spirit nor the profaneness of his language it was recited in the preamble of this charter that one leading object of the enterprise was the propagation of Christianity among "such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God, and might in time be brought to human civility and to a settled and quiet government."

Such was the first charter of James to the colony of Virginia. We will not now pause to consider it minutely either for praise or for blame. With some provisions that seem to be judicious, and which afterward proved themselves to be salutary, it embraces the most destructive elements of despotism and dissension. The settlers were deprived of the meanest privilege of self-government, and were subjected to the control of a council wholly independent of their own action, and of laws proceeding directly or indirectly from the King himself. The Parliament of England would have been a much safer depositary of legislative power for the colonists than the creatures of a monarch who held doctrines worthy of the Sultan of Turkey or the Czar of the Russian empire.