laden with pearls and spices, brocades and precious-stones, on its way to Europe, and suggested an attack.  It is true that the roving Hollander merely commanded a couple of the smallest galleots, with about a hundred and thirty men in the two.  But when was Jacob Heemskerk ever known to shrink from an encounter—­whether from single-handed combat with a polar bear, or from leading a forlorn hope against a Spanish fort, or from assailing a Portuguese armada.  The carrack, more than one thousand tons burthen, carried seventeen guns, and at least eight times as many men as he commanded.  Nevertheless, after a combat of but brief duration Heemskerk was master of the carrack:  He spared the lives of his seven hundred prisoners, and set them on shore before they should have time to discover to what a handful of Dutchmen they had surrendered.  Then dividing about a million florins’ worth of booty among his men, who doubtless found such cruising among the spice-islands more attractive than wintering at the North Pole, he sailed in the carrack for Macao, where he found no difficulty in convincing the authorities of the celestial empire that the friendship of the Dutch republic was worth cultivating.  There was soon to be work in other regions for the hardy Hollander—­such as was to make the name of Heemskerk a word to conjure with down to the latest posterity.  Meantime he returned to his own country to take part in the great industrial movements which were to make this year an epoch in commercial history.

The conquerors of Mendoza and deliverers of Bantam had however not paused in their work.  From Java they sailed to Banda; and on those volcanic islands of nutmegs and cloves made, in the name of their commonwealth, a treaty with its republican antipodes.  For there was no king to be found in that particular archipelago, and the two republics, the Oriental and the Germanic, dealt with each other with direct and becoming simplicity.  Their convention was in accordance with the commercial ideas of the day, which assumed monopoly as the true basis of national prosperity.  It was agreed that none but Dutchmen should ever purchase the nutmegs of Banda, and that neither nation should harbour refugees from the other.  Other articles, however; showed how much farther, the practice of political and religious liberty had advanced than had any theory of commercial freedom.  It was settled that each nation should judge its own citizens according to its own laws, that neither should interfere by force with the other in regard to religious matters, but that God should be judge over them all.  Here at least was progress beyond the system according to which the Holy Inquisition furnished the only enginry of civilization.  The guardianship assumed by Holland over these children of the sun was at least an improvement on the tyranny which roasted them alive if they rejected religious dogmas which they could not comprehend, and which proclaimed with fire, sword, and gibbet that the Omnipotent especially forbade the nutmeg trade to all but the subjects, of the most Catholic king.