Amsterdam during this decade had been rapidly growing in importance and it was soon to be the first seaport in the world.  It had become the emporium of the Baltic trade.  In 1601 it is stated that between 800 and 900 ships left its quays in three days, carrying commodities to the Baltic ports.  They came back laden with corn and other “east-sea” goods, which they then distributed in French, Portuguese and Spanish havens, and even as far as Italy and the Levant.  Ship-building went on apace at Enkhuizen, Hoorn and other towns on the Zuyder Zee; and Zaandam was soon to become a centre of the timber trade.  In Zeeland, Middelburg, through the enterprise of an Antwerp refugee of French extraction, by name Balthazar de Moucheron, was second only to Amsterdam as a sea-port, while Dordrecht and Rotterdam were also busy with shipping.

The energies of the Dutch at this springtide of their national life were far from being confined to European, waters.  Dutch sailors already knew the way to the East-Indies round the Cape of Good Hope through employment on Portuguese vessels; and the trade-routes by which the Spaniards brought the treasures of the New World across the Atlantic were likewise familiar to them and for a similar reason.  The East-Indies had for the merchants of Holland and Zeeland, ever keenly on the look-out for fresh markets, a peculiar attraction.  At first the Cape route was thought to be too dangerous, and several attempts were made to discover a north-west passage along the coast of Siberia.  Balthazar de Moucheron was the pioneer in these northern latitudes.  He established a regular traffic with the Russians by way of the White Sea, and had a factory (built in 1584) at Archangel.  Through his instances, aided by those of the famous geographer Petrus Plancius (likewise a refugee from Antwerp), an expedition was fitted out and despatched in 1594 to try to sail round northern Asia, but it was driven back after passing through the Waigat by ice and storms.  A like fate befell a second expedition in the following year.  Discouraged, but still not despairing, a third fleet set out in 1596 under the command of Jacob van Heemskerk with William Barendtsz as pilot.  Forced to winter in Spitsbergen, after terrible sufferings, Heemskerk returned home in the autumn of 1597 with the remnant of his crews.  Barendtsz was one of those who perished.  This was the last effort in this direction, for already a body of Amsterdam merchants had formed a company for trafficking to India by the Cape; and four ships had sailed, April 2, 1596, under the command of Cornelis Houtman, a native of Gouda.  A certain Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, who had been in the Portuguese service, had published in 1595 a book containing a description from personal knowledge of the route to the East and the character of the Portuguese commerce.  It was the information contained in this work that led the Amsterdam merchants to venture their money upon Houtman’s expedition, which Linschoten himself accompanied as