The Building of the British Empire (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 edition. Excerpt: ...at Bassorah, from which place he went by the Tigris to Mosul, and thence again to Bir on the Euphrates. Fitch thus concludes the account of his long and devious journeyings: " From Birl went to-Aleppo, wherel stayed certain months for company, and then went to Tripolis, where, finding English I came with a prosperous voyage to London, where, by God's assistance, I safely arrived on the 29th of April, 1591, having been eight years out of my native country." ' A trade carried on by the overland route to India and the East generally, however, could never have enabled the English merchants to compete with their Portuguese rivals, even if it had been all plain sailing; but, apart from the natural difficulties of the Mediterranean navigation, following upon the long land journey, there were other reasons why English merchants should wish for a better way of procuring the products of the East. The Mediterranean had always been dangerous on account of the corsairs infesting it; but it had become doubly so to the English since the breaking out of the war with Spain, seeing that, in passing the Strait of Gibraltar, they were liable to injury, if not capture, by the Spanish ships ever lying in wait there for English traders. However, the Englishmen generally gave a good account of themselves, and not unfrequently came off victorious against great odds. Hakluyt, who had a fine feeling for the heroics of his age, gives us several simple, though stirring, accounts of such episodes of sixteenth-century trade. In one instance we have a " notable fight of ten English merchant vessels against twelve Spanish galleons " in the Strait of Gibraltar, on the 24th of April, 1590. The Spanish fleet " lay under the conduct of Andre...