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 we re 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.
This dinner, much to the regret of the hungry guests, was a poor affair. The negro chieftain tried to be very civil to his guests. In their honor he had powdered himself white with the ashes of a wood fire, but the food was neither abundant nor very good. The Hollanders decided to invite his Majesty to one of their own dinners as a good example and a hint. From among the few supplies which were left on board they arranged so excellent a dinner that his royal Highness ate everything on the tab le and then fell fast asleep in his chair. But when the next day the Hollanders tried to buy the fresh provisions which they expected to get, they found that the domains of the king produced nothing but one single goat, a lean goat at that, and four puny chickens.
The coast of Guinea, sometimes called the "dry Gallows," gets its agreeable reputation from the fact that the malarial fevers of this swampy region usually kill all the white people who venture to settle there. The new commander of the expedition caught this malaria, and was sick in his bed for over two months. Sixteen of his sailors died, and finally the expedition was obliged to flee to the healthy islands, which of course belonged to the Portuguese. Early in December they sailed toward Annabon. Once again the Portuguese refused them both water and food. A troop of men were landed to take by force what they could not obtain through an appeal to Christian charity. The Portuguese did not await this attack, but surrendered their fortress and fled to ward the mountains. From there they arranged sniping expeditions which killed many Hollanders. As a punishment, Admiral de Weert burned the white settlement and the church. He took all the provisions which were stored in the little town, and on the second of January of the year 1599 he tried once more to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
This time the wind was favorable. Soon the ships had passed out of the hot equatorial regions. The sailors who had suffered from scurvy and malaria began to feel better in the colder climate of the Argentinian coast. They recovered so fast and they had such a great appetite after their long-enforced fast that many of them threatened to die from over-feeding. And one poor fellow who was so hungry that he stole bread at night from the ship's pantry was publicly hanged to stop further theft of the meager supplies. When the ships were near the coast of South America things went wrong once more. First of all the sailors were frightened by the sudden appearance of what they supposed to be blood upon the surface of the ocean. As far as the eye could reach, the water was of a dark-red color. This phenomenon, however, proved to be caused by billions of little plants. They made the water look quite horrible, but they were entirely harmless. A few days later one of the men, an Englishman, while at dinner suddenly uttered a dreadful scream and fell backward, dead. The next day another one of the sailors suddenly became insane and tried to scratch and bite everybody who came near him. After three days his condition improved somewhat, but he never recovered his reason. When he was put to bed at night he would not allow himself to be covered up. One very cold night both his feet were frozen and had to be amputated. That was the end of the poor fellow. He did not survive the operation.
It was a sad expedition which at last reached the Strait of Magellan on the sixth of April of the year 1599. Happily the weather near the strait was fine. There was plenty of fresh water on the shore. The men killed hun dreds of birds, caught geese and ducks, and found a large supply of oysters. But when finally the day came on which they tried to enter the strait, the wind suddenly veered around, and during four months the ships were forced to stay in their little harbo r. They had enough to eat and they had found wood to keep warm, but much valuable time was lost, and when the winter at last came upon them with sudden violence they were entirely unprepared for it. The reports of the expeditions of Magellan and Drake and Cavendish had shown that an expedition around the world was apt to suffer from too much heat, but rarely from too much cold. Except for the few miles of the Strait of Magellan, the ships sailed in tropical or semi-tropical regions all the time. Therefore the Dutch ships had not brought any heavy clothes or furs, which would have taken up a lot of room, and the food which had been put up for them in Holland had been prepared with the idea of supporting men who did their work under a blazing sun. When they we re obliged to live for a long time in a raw, cold climate and work hard, hunting and fishing and gathering wood amid snow and icy winds, the sailors did not get sufficient nourishment. From sheer misery and exposure one hundred and twenty men died within less than four months. Among them was the captain of the Trouwe. He was the second officer to perish before his ship had reached the Pacific Ocean.
But illness was not the only ene
my of this expedition. The natives of the south coast joined the terrible climate in its attack upon the Hollanders. They murdered Dutch sailors when these had gone on shore to look for fire-wood or to examine their traps. They killed several men and they wounded more. Being wounded was almost as bad as being killed outright, for the spears of the natives were made with nasty barbs which caused very bad wounds. When they once had penetrated into a man's arm or hand, the only way to get them out successfully was by pushing them through until they came out again at the other side, or cut away all the flesh, in both cases a very painful operation.
At last, on the twentieth of August, the wind turned, and the ships were able to enter the strait. The joy of the men did not last very long. The next day there was no wind at all, and once more the fleet anchored. To keep his few remaining men busy, the commander arranged an expedition on shore. It was the first time that a Dutch fleet had been in this part of the world, and the event must be properly celebrated. A high pole was planted in a conspicuous spot on shore, and the adventures of the expedition and the names of the leaders were carved on the pole. Near this pole a small cemetery was made where two sailors who had died the night before were buried. In the evening all went back to their ships. When they returned the next morning, they found that the natives had hacked the monument to pieces and the corpses of the dead Hollanders had been dug out of the earth and had been cut into little bits and were spread all over the shore. This humiliating experience was the last one which they suffered in the strait. The wind at last turned to their advantage and on the third of September the ships reached the Pacific Ocean.
The good weather lasted just seven days. A week later, in the night of the tenth of September, a severe storm attacked the little fleet, and the next morning the ships had lost sight of one another. They came together after a short search, but during the next night there was another gale, and in the morning three of the five ships had disappeared. Only the Trouwe and the Geloof were apparently saved. During three weeks these two ships floated aimlessly about, driven hither and thither upon the angry waves o f the Pacific Ocean. They had few supplies left, and they could not repair the damage that was done to their masts because both ships had sent their carpenters to one of the other vessels which had been in need of a general overhauling and which was now l ost. A month went by, and then they discovered that they had been driven back into the strait. The admiral discussed the situation with his chief officers. Did they advise going back to Holland without having accomplished anything, or would they keep on? The sailors all wanted to return to Holland. They did not have any faith left in the results of this unhappy voyage. Many of them were ill. Others pretended that they were too weak to work. Others murmured about a lack of provisions. There was ground for this talk. The supply-room was getting emptier and emptier in a very mysterious way. At last the admiral decided to investigate this strange case. He discovered that an unknown member of the crew possessed a key to the bread-boxes and stuffed himself every n ight while his comrades were kept on short rations. It was a gross breach of discipline. Apparently the expedition was going from bad to worse. On the afternoon of the tenth of December Admiral de Weert paid a call to the Trouwe to talk over the situation. The next morning the Trouwe had disappeared. De Weert never saw her again. He was all alone, and his safe return depended upon his own unaided efforts. His first duty was to get enough food. On a certain Sunday afternoon the few men of his ship who could still walk were on shore looking for things to eat when they had an encounter with a large number of natives who had just arrived in three canoes. The natives fled, and hid themselves among the cliffs. One woman and two small babies could not get away and were brought back to the ship. The woman was kept a prisoner for forty-eight hours while the Hollanders studied the habits and customs of the wild people of Tierra del Fuego. The subject of their study refused to eat cooked food, but dead birds which were thrown to her she ate as if she had been a wild animal. The children did the same thing, tearing at the feathers with their sharp teeth. After two days the mother and one of the children were sent back to the shore with a number of presents. The other child was kept on board and was taken back to Holland, where it died immediately after arrival. On the sixteenth of December a last attempt was made to find the Trouwe. A blank cartridge was fired, and a few minutes later a distant answer was heard. Soon a s hip came sailing around a nearby cape. It was not the Trouwe, but the ship of Oliver van Noort, who at the head of his expedition had just entered upon the last stretch of his voyage through the strait. Van Noort had a story to tell of a fairly successful voyage, plenty to eat, and little illness. The hungry men of De Weert looked with envy at the happy faces of Van Noort's sailors. The latter had just caught several thousand penguins on a little island not far away. The starving crew of the Geloof asked that they be allowed to sail to this island and catch whatever Van Noort had left alive. De Weert, however, refused this request. Here was his last chance to get to the Indies in the company of the squadron of Van Noort, and he meant to take it. The next morning he joined the new ships on their westward course. But his sailors, weak and miserable after more than a year of illness, could not obey their captain's commands as fast as those who were on the other ships. Soon the Geloof was left behind. The next m orning, when Van Noort entered the Pacific, De Weert was helplessly blown back into the strait. It seemed impossible to do more than he had tried to accomplish against such great odds. He called all his remaining sailors together to hear what they wanted him to do. They all had just one wish, to get home as fast as possible by way of Brazil and Africa. The Pacific, so they argued, offered nothing but disappointment. De Weert promised to give his final decision on the next day, which was the first of January of the year 1600. When the morning came, he found himself once more in the company of other ships. Van Noort had reached the Pacific, but the Western storms had been too much for his strong ships. For the second time the Hollanders were all united in a cold little harbor inside the Strait of Magellan.
Van Noort now paid a personal visit to De Weert and asked what he could do to help him. De Weert was much obliged for this offer, and asked for bread enough to last him another four months. Unfortunately Van Noort could not do this. He had still a very long voyage before him, and did not dare to deprive his own men of their supplies. He advised De Weert to go to the island of the penguins and to fill his storeroom with the dried meat of these birds. Meanw hile, much to his regret, he must leave De Weert as soon as possible, for he was in a hurry.
The next day they said farewell to one another for the last time. De Weert took the precautions to leave instructions for the captain of the lost Trouwe. He wro te a letter which was placed inside a bottle, and this bottle was buried at the foot of a high tree. On the tree itself a board was hammered, and on this board a message was painted telling in Dutch where to look for an important document at the foot of t he tree. Then the ship sailed to the penguin island, and the thirty men who could do any work at all hunted the fat and lazy birds until they had killed several thousand. It was easy work. The penguins obligingly waited on their nests until they were killed. But the trip to the island almost destroyed the entire expedition. There was only one boat left, and in this boat the men who were not sick had rowed to the shore. They had been careless in fastening her, and a sudden squall caught her and threw her on the rocks. She was badly damaged and could not be used without being repaired, but the men on shore had no tools with which to do any repairing, while those on the ship were so ill that they could not swim to the shore with the necessary hammers and saws. Two entire days were used to get that boat into order with the help of one ax and some pocket-knives, and during those two days the men lived out in the open on the cold shore and lived on raw penguin meat.
The island, among other things, contained material evidences of Van Noort's presence. A dead native, with his hands tied behind his back, was found stretched out upon the sand. In a little hollow in the rocks they discovered a woman who had been wounded
by a gunshot. They took good care of the woman, bandaged her wounds, and gave her a pocket-knife. To show her gratitude, she told De Weert of another island where there were even more penguins. The next week was spent on this island, and now the men had plenty of food. But the ship was without a single anchor and had only one leaking lifeboat. With the certainty that he could not land anywhere unless boats were sent for him from shore De Weert decided to return to the coast of Guinea and try to reach home. On the eighteenth of January the Geloof went back upon her track. Two months later the vessel reached the coast of Guinea. This trip back was not very eventful except for one small incident. One of the sailors who was a drunkard had broken into the storeroom and had stolen a lot of rice and several bottle s of wine. Theft was one of the things which was punished most severely. Therefore, the man had been condemned to death and was to be hanged. But while he was sitting in the rigging and waiting for somebody to push him into eternity the other members of t he crew felt sorry for him and asked their captain to spare his life. At first he refused, but finally he agreed to show clemency if the men would never bother him again with a similar request. The prisoner was allowed to come down from his high perch, and to show his gratitude he broke again into the storeroom that same night. He was a very bad example. As such he was hanged from the yardarm of the highest mast, and his body was dropped into the sea.
The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators Page 10
