SPEECH  OF
EX-CHIEF-JUSTICE   CHARLES   P.  DALY.
 

T would seem, from the programme,
that I am expected to respond to
this toast as the President of the
American Geographical Society,
and, with whatever responsibility
that may imply, I will begin by say¬
ing that what the people of The Netherlands have
achieved as geographical explorers and geographers
has never been adequately acknowledged by other
countries, and if they have said much about it them¬
selves it has been in a language that is seldom read
beyond their own limits, except by such Dutch schol¬
ars as our friend Mr. Van Siclen.

Mr. President, although not the first, the Dutch
were among the earliest explorers of the Arctic. They
were explorers in that ice-bound region while still
involved in their gi-eat struggle with Spain for inde¬
pendence. In the year that that great soldier. Prince
Maurice, crowned a succession of victories by the
taking of Groningen,— in that year, 1594, the mer¬
chants of Middleburgh and of Amsterdam sent out
an expedition for the discovery of a passage around