They afterwards reached Batavia, where they were seized by the
president of the Dutch East India Company. This voyage was important, as it
completed the navigation of the coast of South America from the Strait of
Magellan to Cape Horn, and ascertained that the two great oceans, the
Pacific and the Atlantic, joined each other to the south of America, by a
great austral sea. This voyage added also considerably to maritime
geography, "though many of the islands in the Pacific thus discovered have,
from the errors in their estimated longitudes, been claimed as new
discoveries by more recent navigators." In the year 1623, the Dutch found a
shorter passage into the Pacific, by the Straits of Nassau, north-west of
La Maire's Strait; and another still shorter, by Brewer's Straits, in the
year 1643.
The success of the Portuguese and Spaniards in their discoveries of a
passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, and of America, induced, as we
have seen, the other maritime nations to turn their attention to navigation
and commerce. As, however, the riches derived from the East India commerce
were certain, and the commodities which supplied them had long been in
regular demand in Europe, the attempts to discover new routes to India
raised greater energies than those which were made to complete the
discovery of America. In fact, as we have seen, the east coast, both of
South and North America, in all probability would not have been visited so
frequently, or so soon and carefully examined, had it not been with the
hope of finding some passage to India in that direction.
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