Gouda owes its celebrity with its church, with its picturesque canals, its narrow lanes, its cheeses, its siroopwafels, its pipes and its earthenware. Gouda is the fatherland of Cornelis de Houtman (1565-1599), which directed an expedition in the East (1595-1597) and founded the first Dutch settlements in the Eastern Indies (Indonesia), in the island of Java.