XI
From Hoorn to Stavoren
In the matter of ancient buildings, Hoorn is one of the gems of all the towns of Holland. Its fine old harbor tower, its Town Hall, its weigh-house, its Oosterpoort—the most prominent remaining factor of the walls that once surrounded the town—its assortment of quaint old gateways and entrances, its steep-roofed dwellings and warehouses that lean forward or backward at more acute angles than even the oldest buildings in Amsterdam—all combine in contributing to Hoorn a medieval charm that is puissant and irresistible.
But whatever Hoorn may be noted for as she stands to-day, her name has gone down in history as that of the mother of Dutch navigators. Three of them were famous in their day: Schouten, Tasman, and Coen; and, in the eye of the Dutch nation, the greatest of these was Coen—Jan Pieters Coen, the founder of the Dutch dominions in the East Indies and the creator of Batavia as their capital. A statue of him in bronze stands in the Kaasmarkt of the town of his birth.
Tasman was numbered among the foremost discoverers of the seventeenth century. In the year 1639 he was assigned to a voyage of exploration by Van Dieman, the governor general of the Dutch East Indies at the time, his cruise leading him to the Western Pacific. After exploring part of the coast of Luzon in the Philippine Islands, he sailed farther to the northward and around Japan, but, discovering no land not already nailed to the flag of some nation, he set sail again for home on October 15th of the same year.
The Hollanders having already discovered and explored a part of the west coast of Australia, the Dutch East India Company was desirous of obtaining fuller and more accurate information about the territory with a view of exploiting its natural resources and whatever others the company itself might develop. Accordingly, on August 14, 1642, Tasman was dispatched from Batavia in command of two ships and intrusted with the task of bringing back a full and authentic account of whatever he saw and conquered. Owing to the inaccuracy of his sailing charts, head winds that blew him from his prescribed course, and what not, he went south of his mark, and came upon a hitherto undiscovered country which he promptly named Van Dieman’s Land, in honor of his sponsor. But being unaware that what is now known as Tasmania was an island by its own right, he hoisted his flag and set to work exploring what he thought at the time to be the most of Australia. He set sail again from the newly discovered territory, bearing to the eastward with a vague idea of reaching the Solomon Islands. On the 13th of December he discovered a “high, mountainous country,” which he noted in his log book as “Staatenland.” For some unaccountable reason the English have allowed its name to remain as New Zealand, neglecting to change it when they took it over, as they did that of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam.
William Schouten, having had an earlier relapse under the spell of the spray, was the first to sail round the southern extremity of South America, his goal being one and the same with that of Henry Hudson, who attempted a supposed route to China from Amsterdam, first by way of the Chesapeake Bay, and later, the Hudson River. Schouten, in passing, christened the point “Cape Hoorn,” latterly contracted to “Horn,” in honor of his birthplace.
In addition to these, Hoorn refers proudly to the exploits of another of her sons, John Haring by name, a Dutch Horatius whose signal courageous achievement consisted in holding in check, single-handed, a round thousand of Spaniards, while his compatriots gathered themselves together in order to retreat in a systematic manner at least.
