Agriculture and dairy farming could scarcely supply the means to cover the indispensable outlay necessary for keeping their land above water. Already, in a petition for the remission of taxes, addressed by the States of Holland to the Emperor Charles V, we read as follows:— “That Holland is very small, both in length and breadth, almost with three sides exposed to the sea, and full of downs, swamps, turf-moors, lakes, and other unfruitful places, where one can neither sow corn nor graze cattle; wherefore the inhabitants, to find food for their wives and children, are obliged to go and trade and traffic in foreign ports, and to export certain tissues, for which reasons the principal profession of the country is the art of navigation and the sea trade.” Thus from the earliest times they had looked upon navigation and commerce as the great source of their wealth, and from this source they expected to get the means to carry on the war. It may be true that they worshipped the “almighty dollar”, but not for itself, not only from a hope of gain, but also from the purest patriotism, because they could not continue their struggle for independence without money, and this could only be gained by giving more expansion to commerce, and not despising small advantages. Hence their natural resolution to search in every direction for new trade routes, and to risk so many lives and ships on their desperate exploring expeditions in frozen latitudes, hoping to reach Cathay and the Spice Islands by going north-about. In that direction they expected to avoid the superior Spanish naval forces, which in the infancy of the great struggle they could not expect to conquer, as very soon afterwards, in 1609, was done by Heemskerck. He burned the Spanish fleet on their own shores, and thirty years later the gallant Admiral Marten Harpertszoon Tromp carried his broom at the mast-head. The cosmographers of the Netherlands were among the very best in the world, and were well acquainted with all the fruitless endeavours to find a shorter route to the Indies by the north-west.