PIETEE BOTH, THE DUTCH GOVERNOR 79 rived at Bantam in January, 1611. During the next four years he brought the islands within a network of treaties. He thus confirmed from Java to the Moluc- cas the supremacy and exclusive trade of the Dutch; procured, when expedient, the toleration of the Protes- tant religion; and laid the foundations of a new na- tional power in the Eastern Archipelago. On the expi- ration of his office, he sailed in January, 1615, with four richly laden vessels for Europe, but perished in a hurri- cane off the Mauritius. The name of a mountain in that island long commemorated his loss, and appears in a journal of 1689 as " Pierre Both." He had found his task an easy one. The native rulers in the Archipelago, like the coast rajas with whom the Portuguese dealt on the Malabar seaboard, were princes on a small scale. The greatest of them, like the King of Achin and the Sultan of Ternate, exer- cised an uncertain suzerainty over detached territories and islands, each with lesser chiefs of its own. Nor as regards the English did the first Dutch governor- general find much difficulty. The whole number of English ships sent out up to the year 1610, inclusive, amounted to seventeen, and of the seventeen vessels only a few were at any one time in Asiatic waters. The Dutch, on the other hand, had sent out sixty-five ships before the union of the separate companies in 1602, and sixty-nine vessels from 1602. to 1610. The arma- ment and fighting force of the English ships were also inferior to the Dutch. The Dutch, moreover, took a practical care for the well-being and morals of their
