notes of the principal events of his life, and more particularly of his travels in the Levant. * From this we learn that Sanderson (who does not appear to have been related, at all events closely, to the William Sanderson who so munificently supported other schemes of John Davis) had not long returned from three years' sojourn in Turkey, Egypt and Syria, when he came into contact with the navigator. Both were men of enterprise; both were keenly interested in those East Indies which were then close preserves of the Portugo-Spanish crown; and the result of their conferences was a bold plan for a voyage which should carry the flag of St. George into the forbidden seas, and win for England a share of that wealth which was the main strength of her hated rival. Sanderson, in the course of his trading in the Levant, must have heard much of the wonderful lands whence came so many of the products that passed through his hands; and he was doubtless well acquainted with the efforts of Newbery and his companions to reach India via Aleppo and the Persian Gulf. He was familiar with the difficulties and dangers that attended the overland traffic through Syria and Egyptperils by the Turks, perils by the Spaniards, perils by the Moorish pirates that infested the Mediterranean and he saw that, could the ships of Philip on the alternative route be evaded or defied, a direct trade with the Indies might be opened up, and the products of those countries placed at once upon the markets of England and Holland at rates which would bring a fortune to the lucky promoters of the voyage. The account he gives is of the briefest; but it would seem that he and Davis soon found others willing to put a venture into the enterprise; and by the autumn of 1590 all was ready for the start.

How they fared in their bold attempt may best be told in Sanderson's own words. His book contains two accounts of the voyage, both very brief; and, as they are our sole sources of information concerning the expedition, it may be well to give them in full, simply modernising the spelling and punctuation :

"In September, 1590, we set sail in the Samaritan of Dartmouth, bound for the East India, victualled for thirteen months at the least, and well-manned; John Davis captain and pilot, Edward Rieve master. About the Medores [Madeiras) we were overtaken with a great storm, in which extremity we lost our pinnace consort; but afterwards met with an English ship who had saved our men. We had before that storm

* Reproduced, in great part, by his friend Purchas in his 'Pilgrimes' (Book IX.). † At a later date, Sanderson set his apprentice to copy out from among the papers of the English ambassador at Constantinople the five letters on the subject of this expedition which were printed by Purchas (Book IX., chap. xviii.).

† "A little rich Reve, Dier, and others of Dartmouth were owners, victuallers, and voluntaries, were Randall Cotton, Jo. Arundell, Thomas Moore, Edward Rivers, I myself and others, who all came home by cross and loss, for which our God Almighty's mercies His holy name be ever magnified." (Marginal note in Purchas, vide infra.)

been in divers fights with Spaniards and braved by a couple of French at unawares. In that voyage, of one hundred and five men and boys we lost only one. A very hot fight we had with an armado of Spain. She gave us seventeen great shot over-night, and in the morning fought some four or five hours; she shot down our topmast, and through our ship and sails above forty times. Yet no hurt to any of us in person except a poor fellow which was touched on the leg with a great stone shot, which shot rested in the ship; the next day an ill surgeon cut off the leg above the knee, in which torment of cutting, sawing, and searing, the poor wretch died in his arms. This jolly Spaniard left us, for if he had durst, he might have laid us aboard. With this fight, and the extreme storm we had before passed, our Samaritan was so crazy and leaky, that [we] all in general took our turns at the pump; [we] made four or five hundred strokes in a glass [for many days and nights together] *; with the said water we watered our fish. † So we were forced to return for England, where at Falmouth we arrived in February [1591]; so to Dartmouth. In that voyage we went ashore [only *) at Safia, Santa Crus, and the Medores, as I remember."

The other account is somewhat shorter :

"Now intended I a voyage unto the East India, [and] victualled out the Samaritan of Dartmouth at Dartmouth; Ed. Rive, master, Jo. Davis, captain, J. Sanderson, E. Rivers, R. Cotton, J. Arendall, each victuallers, T. Percie, T. More, R. Mortimore, W. Hart, each voluntary gentlemen who served for their shares in all one hundred and five men and boys, victualled for thirteen months. But what with an extraordinary and extreme storm and stout fight, we had a forced return, [having] escaped sundry and marvellous dangers. [We] pumped many days together above four hundred strokes in a glass. [We] lost in fight only one poor man, who with a great round stone shot out of a cannon was hit on the leg, the shot resting in the ship; by John Jane § a bad surgeon's handling, he died the next day, and had his body thrown overboard after his leg. After five months, we arrived ship and pepper || safe in Dartmouth,

* Added in Purchas.

† This suggests that, finding it impossible to effect the object of their voyage, they had set to work to procure a cargo, or part cargo, of fish, for which there was always a market in England.

+ Afterwards commanded the Dainty in Candish's second voyage to the South Sea. He was a great friend of John Davis.

§ This would seem to be Davis's faithful companion and the chronicler of his voyages, though he is always described elsewhere as a merchant or supercargo. Possibly he had undertaken the duty in the absence of a regular surgeon; or again, as the name has evidently been inserted at a later date, Sanderson's memory may have been at fault.

|| This reference to pepper is difficult to explain; but the word itself is plain enough in the manuscript. It is, of course, possible that they had procured some at one of the three ports at which they touched.

lost and defrauded of all by Captain Davis, who since was murdered by those of Japan. * [I] borrowed to bear my charge there and bring me home. Ed. Rivers and myself in the snow went in our boats from Dartmouth to Exeter, as I remember. There hired I a horse for twenty shillings, and came with the carrier to London." †

Thus ends the story of this voyage, trifling perhaps in itself, and barren of results as far as its immediate object was concerned, but interesting on account of one at least of the adventurers, and also from the fact already mentioned of its being the first attempt of our countrymen to follow the Portuguese route round the Cape. It is unnecessary to say anything in refutation of the wild charge against Davis made in the last paragraph, as that is sufficiently disproved by his general character for uprightness and integrity; but it may be mentioned that Sanderson was evidently a man of violent temper, and his book abounds with malicious statements concerning the various persons with whom he was brought into contact.

It is proverbially easy to be wise after the event; and, having once found this manuscript account of the voyage, we are in a position to point out that the first of our two extracts already existed in print in the pages of Purchas (Book IX, chap. 16, para. 2), and to wonder that the passage should have escaped the notice of Davis's biographers. But it must be borne in mind that, in the first place, it occurs in a part of the reverend geographer's work where one would least expect to find it, namely, in the general account of John Sanderson's travels which is given in the section devoted to the Holy Land; and secondly, that although a John Davis is mentioned by name, his identity with the John Davis could only be conjectural in the absence of the link now supplied by the sentence italicised in the second extract. These few words, however, clench the matter, and seem to leave no reasonable doubt that future biographers of this distinguished seaman will be able to add to the roll of his voyages the attempt "for the East India" in the Samaritan of Dartmouth.

* This crucial passage-which at once identifies Sanderson's Davis with the great navigator--is interlineated, having apparently been inserted in a revision made at a later date (probably about 1615).

† One cannot refrain from adding to this account a side-note made by Sanderson in later years, when, with the thought of death pressing heavily upon his mind, he went through his autobiographical notes, underlining any acts of sin already mentioned, and adding any others that he could recall, this amongst the rest:- "Before my going out on that voyage, walking under a rock near the compass at Dartmouth, I found an iron shot, which I took up. (I) kept it, and carried it aboard the ship Samaritan. I gave fire to a demiculverin. God of His mercy forgive me that voyage's whole proceeding!"

RECORDS OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY.*

By STEPHEN WHEELER.

THE first letter-book of the East India Company, never before in type, contains a mass of material bearing directly on a most notable chapter in the annals of commercial geography. The period covered extends from the year 1600, the date of Queen Elizabeth's charter "to certeine Aduenturors for the discoury of the trade for the East Indies"-here printed from the oldest extant manuscript-to 1619, by which time the Company had established factories at Bantam in Sumatra, at Firando in Japan, in Borneo, Siam, and Celebes, at Surat in the Moghul's dominions, and on the coast of Malabar. Among the more curious papers in the volume may be noticed "a discription of the iland of Banda," written early in the seventeenth century. The list of merchandizes "spent and uttered" there includes "Brass peeces of ordinance with chambers in the breeches brought from Chyna as thought"; and doubtless identical with the breech-loading cannon seen by Ferdinand Mendez Pinto on the borderland of China and Tibet. In a "discription of the iland of Amboyna translated out of the Dutch in 1605" will be found a list of English and Hollands goods there on sale, such as "long peeces with smap hances the cocke to stand on the hither side the panne;" that is to say, "snaphances," or guns, with spring locks. The inhabitants of the Celebes are described as heathen, but very good to deal withal, and to live by, " and which doe hold good right and justice and order after their manner."

...

In a letter addressed to their factors at Bantam, April, 1609, the Company say they have been given to understand that a trade for diamonds may be had to Siquedana in Borneo, "whereof we would be glad to tast." The early history of English enterprise and discovery in the Eastern seas, from Java to Japan, is abundantly illustrated. No less interesting are the frequent allusions to projects for opening up an overland route between Europe and India. Writing in 1607 to their loving friends William Keeling and William Hawkins, the Company exhort them, on their arrival at Aden, to send letters " by some Moores that go to Argier (Algiers) to Richard Allen, Consull theare, or to Aleppo to Mr. Paule Pyndar, Consull." A couple of years later the Company's factors were instructed to endeavour, by all possible means, to send intelligence overland, either by way of the Red Sea to Cairo, whence letters would be forwarded to Marseilles, by the Persian Gulf or by caravan through Persia. There is a letter from one Richard Steel, who in 1616 proposed to reopen the trade between Scind and Ormuz, the native merchants being weary of their long travel overland from Lahore

1

to Isfahan, "which is five months' journey, besides the toyles and customes with loss of many camels." According to Mr. Steel the yearly trade between Lahore and Persia at that time amounted to 12,000 or 14,000 camel loads.

More than one allusion will be found to various projects for discovering the North-west passage. For instance, there is the agreement made in 1602 with George Waymouth, who for the inestimable benefit of his native country and his own perpetual honour, was sent out to discover the passage by the north-west towards the parts or kingdoms of Cataya or China or the back side of America; the said George Waymouth to receive £500 on his arrival at any port within the kingdoms of Cataya, China or Japan. There is also the pass granted in 1606 to John Knight for the discovery of the North-west passage. Knight himself landed on the coast of Labrador, and was never heard of again. The journal of his expedition has been printed by Mr. Clements Markham in one of the volumes of the Hakluyt Society's series. The reader may recollect that Pietro della Valle sailed with an English ship's captain who averred that he had discovered Greenland and showed a narwhal's tooth in proof thereof.

Apart from the literary value of these old records, and the interest that may attach to letters addressed by James I. to that most puissant prince Akbar, or to the great King of Japan, the volume is especially useful for the indication it affords of the spirit which animated the founders of the East India Company, and impelled the adventurers of those days to seek in untravelled regions new outlets for English trade, and new ports where their ships might be laden with the wealth of the East. Nothing could exceed the far-sighted solicitude with which minute instructions were drawn up for the guidance of the captains and factors. It was a great enterprise seriously undertaken, and though these seventeenth-century speculators trusted much to Providencealways to be propitiated by the daily reading of prayers on board their ships and at their factories as little as might be was left to chance. Dangers were foreseen, and, if possible, averted. Nor was it thought that any English wares, of whatever quality, would find a market and sale in Asia. “We requier you," the Company wrote, "to be more carefull and more diligent to write us, than heretofore you have beene, as alsoe in seeking out what sorts and kinds of all clothes, kersies, and wollen comodities are theare most vendible." The Manchester cottons decorated with figures of ballet girls, which, according to Mr. E. F. Knight are on sale in Chitral, would not have been considered suitable for the Eastern market in the early days of the East India Company.

Of the care which has been bestowed on the printing and editing of these records it would be difficult to speak too highly. Sir George Birdwood's introduction is by itself an exhaustive essay on the history of commercial intercourse between Europe and Asia; while the notes and a carefully-compiled index are useful as well as elaborate.