de
around the Cape of Good Hope. Fortunately however at this crisis in their
commercial destiny there was a single Hollander who had thoroughly
learned the lesson which it was so necessary that all his countrymen
should now be taught. Few men of that period deserve a more kindly and
more honourable remembrance by posterity for their contributions to
science and the progress of civilization than John Huygen van Linschoten,
son of a plain burgher of West Friesland. Having always felt a strong
impulse to study foreign history and distant nations and customs; he
resolved at the early age of seventeen "to absent himself from his
fatherland, and from the conversation of friends and relatives," in order
to gratify this inclination for self-improvement. After a residence of
two years in Lisbon he departed for India in the suite of the Archbishop
of Goa, and remained in the East for nearly thirteen years. Diligently
examining all the strange phenomena which came under his observation and
patiently recording the results of his researches day by day and year by
year, he amassed a fund of information which he modestly intended for the
entertainment of his friends when he should return to his native country.
It was his wish that "without stirring from their firesides or
counting-houses" they might participate with him in the gratification and
instruction to be derived from looking upon a world then so strange, and
for Europeans still so new. He described the manners and customs, the
laws, the religions, the social and political institutions, of the
ancient races who dwelt in either peninsula of India. He studied the
natural history, the botany, the geography of all the regions which he
visited. Especially the products which formed the material of a great
traffic; the system of culture, the means of transportation, and the
course of commerce, were examined by him with minuteness, accuracy, and
breadth of vision. He was neither a trader nor a sailor, but a man of
letters, a scientific and professional traveller. But it was obvious when
he returned, rich with the spoils of oriental study during thirteen years
of life, that the results of his researches were worthy of a wider
circulation than that which he had originally contemplated. His work was
given to the public in the year 1596, and was studied with avidity not
only by men of science but by merchants and seafarers. He also added to
the record of his Indian experiences a practical ma