[CHAPTER VII]
THE ATTACK UPON THE WEST COAST OF AMERICA
This is the story of another expedition which tried to get possession of the Indian route by way of the Strait of Magellan. It was a sad business.
Oliver Van Noort, although he met with many difficulties, managed to bring one ship home and added greatly to the fame of the Dutch navigators. But the second expedition, equipped by two of the richest men of Rotterdam and sent out under the best of auspices, proved to be a total failure. The capital of half a million guilders which had been invested was an absolute loss. Most of the participants in the voyage died. The ships were lost. Perhaps everything had been prepared just a trifle too carefully. Van Noort, with his little ships, knew that he had to depend upon his own energy and resourcefulness; but the captains of the five ships which left Rotterdam on the twenty-seventh of July, 1598, with almost five hundred men were under the impression that half of the work had been done at home by the owners. Perhaps, too, there is such a thing as luck in navigating the high seas. One fleet sails for the Indies and has good weather all the way across the ocean. When the wind blows hard it blows from the right direction. The next squadron which leaves two weeks later meets with storms and suffers from one unfortunate accident after the other; everybody gets sick, and when the sailors look for relief on land they find nothing but a barren desert. And so it goes. It is not for us to complain, but to recite faithfully the sad adventures of the good ships the Hoop, the Liefde, the Geloof, the Trouwe, and the Blyde Boodschap, all of which tried very hard to accomplish what Van Noort had been allowed to do with much less trouble.
The ships, as we said, left Rotterdam in July, and after two months they reached the Cape Verde Islands. There they found a couple of ships from Hamburg, for the Germans at the early period of exploring and discoveries were very active sailors. A few years later, however, the Thirty Years' War was to destroy their seafaring enterprises for centuries at least.
Near these islands the Hollanders had their first encounter with the Portuguese. The stories of such meetings between the early Dutch navigators and the Portuguese owners of African and Asiatic islands always read the same way. The Hollanders ask for leave to go on shore to get fresh water and to buy provisions. This leave is never granted. Then the two parties fight each other. In most cases the Hollanders are victorious, though they still have too much respect for the traditional power of the Portuguese to risk a definite attack upon their strongholds. Very slowly and only after many years of experiment do they venture to drive the Portuguese out of their colonies and take possession of this large, but badly managed, empire.
When our five Dutch ships reached the island of San Thome they sent a messenger to the Portuguese commander and asked him, please, to give them some fresh water. The Portuguese told the Hollanders to wait. But they could not wait, for the water on board the ships had all been used up. Therefore they landed with one hundred and fifty men and charged the hill upon which the Portuguese had built a fortress. The garrison was forced to surrender. Before any more fighting took place the Portuguese offered to treat the Hollanders as welcome guests if they would sail to the next harbor of San Iago, where there was an abundance of stores and where general provisions were for sale at reasonable prices. This proposal was accepted. The sailors went back to their ships and made for San Iago. The wind, however, was not favorable, and they did not reach their destination until the hour appointed to meet the Portuguese officials had passed. When they arrived near the shore they noticed that the soldiers on land were very active and had placed a number of cannon in an ambush from which they could destroy the Dutch ships as soon as they should have dropped anchor. This, of course, was a breach of good faith. So back they went to their first landing-place. They landed, filled all their water-tanks, took the corn stored in a small storehouse, killed several Portuguese, caught a large number of turtles for the sick people on board, and hoisted sail to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
And then the bad luck which was to follow this expedition began. The admiral of the fleet, Jacques Mahu, died suddenly of a fever and was buried at sea. Two weeks later so many men were desperately ill with the same fever that the ships were obliged to return upon their own track and establish a hospital upon one of the islands off the coast of Guinea. All this time the wind blew from the wrong direction. When at last they saw land, they found that they were near the coast of Lower Guinea. They sent a boat to the shore to discover some native tribe which owned cattle. But the natives, who feared all white men as possible slave-dealers, ran into the bushes and carefully took their possessions with them. Fortunately, after a few days another Dutch ship appeared upon the horizon, and the first mate of this vessel, a Frenchman by birth, knew the language of the negroes. Through him a message was sent to the king of a small tribe, and when it had been proved that the Hollanders were not slave-dealers, but honest merchants on their way to the Indies and willing to pay money for whatever they bought, their newly elected commander, Sebalt de Weert was received in state and invited to dine with his Majesty.