The magistrate, in order to avert an evil that would have pressed upon individuals only, had recourse to an expedient which endangered the safety of all. Some enterprising persons in Zealand had freighted a large fleet with provisions, which succeeded in passing the guns of the enemy, and discharged its cargo at Antwerp. The hope of a large profit had tempted the merchants to enter upon this hazardous speculation; in this, however, they were disappointed, as the magistrate of Antwerp had, just before their arrival, issued an edict regulating the price of all the necessaries of life. At the same time to prevent individuals from buying up the whole cargo and storing it in their magazines with a view of disposing of it afterwards at a dearer rate, he ordered that the whole should be publicly sold in any quantities from the vessels. The speculators, cheated of their hopes of profit by these precautions, set sail again, and left Antwerp with the greater part of their cargo, which would have sufficed for the support of the town for several months. This neglect of the most essential and natural means of preservation can only be explained by the supposition that the inhabitants considered it absolutely impossible ever to close the Scheldt completely, and consequently had not the least apprehension that things would come to extremity. When the intelligence arrived in Antwerp that the prince intended to throw a bridge over the Scheldt the idea was universally ridiculed as chimerical. An arrogant comparison was drawn between the republic and the stream, and it was said that the one would bear the Spanish yoke as little as the other. "A river which is twenty-four hundred feet broad, and, with its own waters alone, above sixty feet deep, but which with the tide rose twelve feet more--would such a stream," it was asked, "submit to be spanned by a miserable piece of paling? Where were beams to be found high enough to reach to the bottom and project above the surface? and how was a work of this kind to stand in winter, when whole islands and mountains of ice, which stone walls could hardly resist, would be driven by the flood against its weak timbers, and splinter them to pieces like glass? Or, perhaps, the prince purposed to construct a bridge of boats; if so, where would he procure the latter, and how bring them into his intrenchments? They must necessarily be brought past Antwerp, where a fleet was ready to capture or sink them."