Page 17 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

CHAPTER I
The Dawn of the Empire

Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe—The defeat of the Invincible
Armada and its effects—Fenton’s disastrous enterprise—
Cavendish’s voyage round the world—Expedition to the East
commanded by Raymond—His ship founders in a storm off
the Cape—James Lancaster succeeds to the command—His
career—He visits Penang—Raids Portuguese shipping in the
Straits of Malacca—He returns to England—Subsequent
expedition to Brazil—Ralph Fitch and others proceed to the
East overland—Fitch’s account of his travels—The Dutch
admiral, Houtman, conducts a voyage to the East—Its effect
on English enterprise.
\\THEN the long reign of Elizabeth was drawing
VV towards its splendid close there was planted
in the minds of Englishmen a mighty idea. Their con­
ception was of an England no longer self-centred and self-
contained—no mere “ sceptred isle ” seated in splendid
isolation upon the inviolate sea, but of a power which,
bursting the artificial bonds imposed by an arrogant
foreign domination, would make its commercial frontiers,
co-terminous with the utmost limits of the known world.
Many causes contributed to produce this awakening of
the national consciousness to the country’s higher des­
tinies. The voyages of the early navigators, by lifting
the curtain upon the realities of that mysterious outer
world which had existed hitherto to a large extent only
m Hie imagination, created an interest in strange peoples
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