ivals; and over the island of Ceylon they
established an ascendancy almost as complete as that which they had
created in the archipelago.

They were intelligent enough also to see the importance of good
calling-stations on the route to the East. For this purpose they
planted a settlement in Mauritius, and another at the Cape of Good
Hope. But these settlements were never regarded as colonies. They were
stations belonging to a trading company; they remained under its
complete control, and were allowed no freedom of development, still
less any semblance of self-government. If Cape Colony grew into a
genuine colony, or offshoot of the mother-country, it was in spite of
the company, not by reason of its encouragement, and from first to last
the company's relations with the settlers were of the most unhappy
kind. For the company would do nothing at the Cape that was not
necessary for the Eastern trade, which was its supreme interest, and
the colonists naturally did not take the same view. It was this
concentration upon purely commercial aims which also prevented the
Dutch from making any use of the superb field for European settlement
opened up by the enterprise of their explorers in Australia and New
Zealand. These fair lands were left unpeopled, largely because they
promised no immediate trade profits.

In the West the enterprises of the Dutch were only less vigorous than
in the East, and they were marked by the same feature of an intense
concentration upon the purely commercial aspect. While the English and
(still more) the French adventurers made use of the lesser West Indian
islands, unoccupied by Spain, as bases for piratical attacks upon the
Spanish trade, the Dutch, with a shrewd instinct, early deserted this
purely destructive game for the more lucrative business of carrying on
a smuggling trade with the Spanish mainland; and the islands which they
acquired (such as Curayoa) were, unlike the French and English islands,
especially well placed for this purpose. They established a sugar
colony in Guiana. But their main venture in this region was the
conquest of a large part of Northern Brazil from the Portuguese (1624);
and here their exploitation was so merciless, under the direction of
the Company of the West Indies, that the inhabitants, though they had
been dissatisfied with the Portuguese government, and had at first
welcomed the Dutch conquerors, soon revolted against them, and after
twenty years drove them out