teen yachts, fully armed and equipped-- the former to be at least of three hundred and the latter of eighty tons' burden; but these vessels were to be maintained at the expense of the company, which was to furnish, unconditionally, sixteen ships and fourteen yachts, of like tonnage, for the defense of trade and purposes of war, which, with all merchant vessels, were to be commanded by an admiral appointed and instructed by their High Mightinesses." And this magnificent programme of naval aggression was no mere wordy ornamentation woven into the prosaic context of a matter-offact commercial agreement for nattering effect. The West India Company, with its ships of war and armed merchantmen, under brilliant commanders, scoured the Spanish Main, capturing many a richly freighted bark of the enemy, and, not content with the prizes of the high seas, it dispatched expeditions to attack the Spanish territorial possessions in the Antilles and South America, which proceeded from conquest to conquest. By its energy and prowess, in the name of the republic of the United Netherlands, was begun in the first half of the seventeenth century the work of dismemberment of the vast Spanish empire in the New World which now, at the close of the nineteenth century, has been so gloriously completed by the arms of the republic of the United States. On the South American mainland Brazil, a province of Portugal, at that time tributary to Spain, was conquered DUTCH WINDMI and held for several years as Dutch territory, and the country known as Dutch Guiana, where the flag of Holland still floats, also yielded itself to these merchant princes In addition numerous AVest India islands were of the Netherlands. taken. A celebrated episode of the company's naval operations during " Silver Fleet " (1628) , having the war was the capture of the Spanish the enormous value of $4,600,000 in our money.