Hudson Tercentenary An historical retrospect regarding the object and quest of an all-water route from Europe to India; The Obstacles in the Way; and also Hudson's voyage to America in 1609 and some of its results

In the year 326 B. C. Alexander the Great marched his conquering Macedonian legions against the myriads of Asiatic troops, subdued them and marched on to the Hindus, where he "improvised a fleet" for his army, sailed down that river, called Sacred, to the Indian ocean. Astonished at the wealth of the country and having amassed precious gems and hundreds of millions of dollars he returned loaded with his treasures up the Euphrates, to that most wonderful city of ancient times, Babylon, where he died. He opened the western doors of India, which exposed its great wealth, excited the avarice of the small number of Greeks who knew of his exploits; and for centuries it was the Europeans' Eldorado, which ultimately, by its luxury and effeminacy, undermined western manhood and led to the decay of Greece and Rome.

Asia, beyond the Euphrates, except by a few, was an unknown country to Europeans until Marco Polo in 1271 A. D., in the company of his father and uncle, met Kublai Khan, the Mongol Emperor, won his confidence and esteem and by him was entrusted with the most important missions. During the seventeen years he remained he visited the most important places in China, India and the East Indies, and returned to Italy loaded with the rarest, most precious gems and immense wealth, published a book telling his experience and picturing the East in the most roseate colors, generally emanating from fancy, but in this case resting upon facts of which he was able to furnish satisfactory proof.

The fact established that India--the East Indies had the gold, silver, precious gems and stones, ebony, ivory, cloves, cinnamon, cassia, spices and the most beautiful and costly fabrics, articles not obtainable elsewhere and the great desiderata of the Europeans, the question arose as to how they could the most easily, quickly and cheaply be obtained. They could, without much difficulty, find their way to the Indian ocean, but the transportation thence to Europe must be by "the ship of the desert," the camel, across the Arabian desert and the Isthmus of Suez, "the bridge of nations" to the Mediterranean or by a more northerly route through the Caspian and Black seas. Caravans must be formed by the merchants and armed troops to protect them against the robbers. The land route by the caravans was slow and very expensive, and the hope was cherished that an all-water route might be found which would not only shorten the time, but greatly lessen the expense of transportation. For a considerable time the Phoenicians, occupying a little skirt of land on the eastern end of the Mediterranean, and the first distinctly commercial nation in the world's history, virtually monopolized this land transportation; and then distributed the articles along the shore of the Mediterranean, where they had planted colonies clear up to the Pillars of Hercules. But Venice and Genoa, rival and wealthy cities of Italy, with fine harbors on this inland sea, sought the India trade, supplanted Phoenicia and became greatly enriched by it. The great desideratum--an all-water route from western Europe to the Indies--had not yet been found, but after the Italian cities had enjoyed, monopolized the trade with India for a period of 150 years, another little skirt of land on the west end of the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic ocean, Portugal, brought about a complete change in the transportation which deprived Venice and Genoa of that business.

Henry, Prince of Portugal, surnamed the Navigator, far in advance of his time in geographical knowledge and in the science of navigation, introduced the compass and the astrolabe, which he furnished with nautical maps and other guides for his mariners, whom he inspired to sail along the western coast of Africa and double the Cape of Good Hope. This, Bartholomew Diaz, a Portuguese navigator, did in 1486, and then it seemed certain that an all-water route from western Europe to India had been found, but it was not an accomplished fact until Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese navigator, availing himself of Diaz's discovery of 1486, made a voyage in 1497 from Lisbon to Calicut (not Calcutta) in southwestern India.

Henry "the Navigator" was the father of what may be called ocean, in contradistinction to coast, navigation, scientific, instead of chance navigation, although he died before the Cape of Good Hope had been doubled. After Diaz had doubled the Cape of Good Hope in 1486, the furor of every mariner was to point the prow of his vessel toward India to share in its precious gems, its beautiful and costly fabrics, articles of luxury, and its great wealth. The India fever seized all the maritime nations of Europe, Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, England, Sweden and Denmark. Christopher Columbus in 1492 sought, and thought he had found India by sailing westward. Then Rodrigo Lenzoli Borgia, a Spaniard, and the Pope, under the title of Alexander VI, assuming to be vice-gerent of the world, made a division of all the newly-discovered, or subsequently to be discovered, heathen lands between the two great Catholic powers, Spain and Portugal, by drawing a line from pole to pole one hundred leagues west of the Azores and the Cape de Verde islands (this line was subsequently changed) and declared that all lands discovered west of that line and not belonging to some Christian prince should belong to Spain, and all similar lands east of that line should belong to Portugal. The two great maritime and exploring nations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were Portugal and Spain--the former in the east and the latter in the west. Alas! their great fame is in the past. Spain hoped to reach the Indies by a shorter all-water route, sailing westward, and that was Columbus's mission, purpose and hope.

The edict of the Pope did not, in the least, restrain France, England or the Netherlands from attempting to make discoveries, and France, England, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark granted charters to companies of their own subjects, granting them great and exclusive rights, and calling them East India companies. At the close of the year A. D. 1600, Queen Elizabeth chartered the English East India Company with most extraordinary rights and privileges, and thus laid the foundations for Great Britain's Asiatic empire.

The Dutch East India Company charter was granted in 1602, to trade to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope and the Strait of Magellan for twenty-one years, and no other of the East India companies has been so successfully managed. The Dutch have derived large revenue from the islands they still hold there, viz.: Java, the Moluccas or Spice islands, a large part of Borneo, Sumatra, Celebes and several small islands in the Malay Archipelago.

Cornelius Hartman, a Dutch navigator, who had spent some time in Lisbon, Portugal, returned in 1594 to Amsterdam, where he gave such a glowing account of the rich and wonderful products of the East, which covered the quays of the Tagus, in Lisbon, that nine prominent merchants of Amsterdam formed a company, equipped a fleet of four ships, fitted for war (a war then prevailing between Holland and Spain) and for trade, and put Hartman in command. He followed the Portuguese route, and two years later returned with cargoes far surpassing the expectations or even the hopes of the company.

Seeing this Indian wealth upon their own docks, other associations and companies were formed in the Netherlands to engage in this lucrative trade. Rivalry between them became so great as to diminish the profits that a consolidation of the companies was effected by Barneveldt. This company consisted of six branches called chambers, each of which was to be managed by its own directors (originally fifty-three in all) in different parts of the country.

A general council of seventeen directors (Amsterdam eight, Zealand four, Rotterdam, Hoorn and Enkhuizen each one, and the seventeenth to be chosen by the chamber of Zealand, the Maas and North Holland) were by a majority of votes to determine all voyages. This arrangement was made to protect the small chambers against the power and policy of Amsterdam if against their interests. Each locality was secured in its due proportion of the business of the company. Each chamber had the exclusive management of its ships sent out by it and was held responsible for the property coming into its possession. The general council of seventeen did not meet often, but the subordinate chambers could legislate upon subjects appropriate, and which did not trench upon the general policy and course of the company.

The Dutch East India Company was clothed with extraordinary powers and privileges and became very wealthy; not alone in the pursuit of the East India trade, but by capturing in the West Indies galleons containing great quantities of gold and silver, which the Spaniards, by the most cruel methods, had taken in Mexico and Peru.

The ancients held different opinions about the form, dimensions, the proportion of land to water, of the earth, and as to whether it was motionless, around which all the universe revolved, as the great center, and of supreme importance, or whether it was merely a satellite revolving around the sun. It seems flat and the heavenly bodies seem to revolve around it. Others thought the earth was a sphere because "the sphere is the most perfect form; it was the center of the universe because that is the place of honor; and it is motionless, because motion is less dignified than rest." Some believed that the earth is round and rests upon the ocean. Homer (900 B. C.) taught that the earth is flat, and so, too, did some of the learned men of Greece and Rome, in the Augustan age. The great Church of Rome, of unequaled influence and power, taught that the earth is flat and the center of the universe and interdicted, and for centuries punished as heretics, those denying the infallibility of the Popes and teaching otherwise. It is probable that about 600 B. C., Thales of Miletus, one of the "Seven Wise Men of Greece," a famous astronomer and geometer, was the first to teach that the earth is round. About 550 B. C. Pythagoras, the renowned Greek philosopher and mathematician, taught that "the earth is a globe which admits of antipodes; that it is in motion; is not the center of the universe, but revolves around the sun." Plato, Aristotle, Hipparchus, Pliny, Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Eratosthenes and many others, the most eminent scholars of their times, believed that the earth is a sphere; and Eratosthenes, an Alexandrian philosopher, astronomer, geometer and geographer about 210 B. C. thought that he had not only proved that by scientific astronomical observations but also the speed of the earth in its revolutions; its magnitude and also the relative proportion of its constituent elements of land and water.

Claudius Ptolemy, about 150 A. D., a celebrated Alexandrian astronomer, geographer and mathematician, held the opinion and promulgated it, that the earth is a sphere and that the sun, planets and stars revolve around it as the grand center. He was the founder of the Ptolemaic System which was almost universally received for 1,350 years, when the system of Copernicus (a revival of the system of Pythagoras) permanently displaced it, notwithstanding the violent opposition, extending to persecution, of the Church of Rome against it.