COMPARATIVE VIEW. — ^HOLLAND. 155 



The Dutch authors therefore conclude, that should 

 it ever have so happened, that the whole fleet of 180 

 ships should have returned home without a single 

 fish, the adventurers would, in fact, lose the sum of 

 1,800,000 florins ; hut so far from this sum being 

 lost to the State, the equipment of the Greenland 

 fleet, notwithstanding the total failure of the fish- 

 ery, would augment the interior circulation of 

 money, in the amount of the above enumeration of 

 l,562,400y; and the amount of loss to the State, 

 in this point of view, would only consist of that 

 proportion of the total advances paid to foreign na- 

 tions for hemp, tar, masts, timber, staves, iron, and 

 other articles, which is calculated at 237,600 flo- 

 rins. 



M. Gerard Van Sante, published in 1770, " An 

 Alphabetical List of the Captains of Fishing-ships 

 sent to Greenland and Davis' Straits * ;" which, not- 

 withstanding the unpromising title, is in reality 

 an instructive work. It is from it, indeed, that the 

 most interesting details of the success of the Dutch 

 fishery during a period of more than a century, in- 

 cluded between 1669 and 1779, are derived. While 

 the whale-fishery opened to the inhabitants of 

 Holland a new branch of commerce, it, at the 

 same time, conferred two important advantages on 

 the State ; the first and the most general was, that it 



* " Alphabetische Naamlyst van alle Groenlandsche en Straat 

 Davische Comraandeurs." 



