We have no information as to the Tasman family, but it is 

 to be presumed that its social status was a humble one. How 

 Abel came by the surname which is now world-renowned is a 

 matter of dispute. In the Luytjegast district family names 

 were unknown until the beginning of this century. The son 

 added to his own christian name the christian name of his 

 father ; thus, Abel, the son of John, became Abel Janszoon, 

 and by this name simply Tasman is often designated in the old 

 records. A nickname was often acquired, derived from some 

 personal peculiarity, from a trade, a sign, or a ship. It has 

 been conjectured that either Abel Jansz or his father took the 

 name Tasman or Taschman from a boat or vessel named the 

 Tasrh (bag or net), belonging to the family.* 



Of young Abel's early life in the flat polders or meadows 

 of Luytjegast there is no record. The boy would see little or 

 nothing of the horrors of the war which for forty years had been 

 desolating a great part of the Low Countries. The most 

 desperate part of the struggle was over with the death of Alex- 

 ander of Parma. The gloomy bigot and tyrant, Philip the 

 Second, was dead. Flanders had fallen, and had become an 

 obedient and desolate Spanish province, under the rule of the 

 Archduke Albert and his wife Isabella of Spain ; but the 

 United Provinces, under Prince Maurice of Nassau, son of 

 William the Silent, were not only holding their own against 

 the Spaniards, but were daily growing in prosperity and 

 power. When young Abel ' was six years old they had 

 succeeded in wringing from their exhausted enemy a twelve 

 years' truce, with the acknowledgment of the Republic, and 

 of its right to carry on the India trade. The boy's imagina- 

 tion must have been often stirred by tales of the daring deeds 

 of the Beggars of the Sea, and the heroic resistance of 

 Hollanders and Zeelanders to the mighty power of Spain. 

 Not less must his spirit of adventure have been stimulated by 

 the stories that drifted to his quiet village telling of the riches 

 of India, of the Spice Islands, and of far Cathay. Small 

 wonder that the old sea-roving Frisian blood asserted itself, 

 and that Abel Jansz, like the majority of Hollanders in 

 that age, found his vocation as a sailor, that he had managed 

 to acquire some education is evident from the fact that he had 

 at least learned to write, a somewhat rare accomplishment in 

 those days for persons in his humble station. 



It is not unlikely that in the fisheries of the North Sea, that 

 nursery of daring sailors, he served his first apprenticeship to 

 the ocean. But the adventurous spirit was strong within him, 

 and it was natural that he should soon find his way to 



* ™ the Archives of Hoorn there is a document relating to a ship called 

 the 1 tisch, of which the skipper was Cornells Gemtszoon Taschman. 



