Page 31 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

THE DAWN OF THE EMPIRE 31

cccdcd to Aleppo and thence by caravan to a town on the
Euphrates. They travelled down the Euphrates to the
head of the Persian Gulf, where Eldred left the party.
Fitch, with his three companions, afterwards went to
Ormuz, where the Portuguese, who wanted no poachers on
their preserves, promptly clapped the party in prison.
Eventually they were shipped off to Goa to be dealt with by
the Viceroy, whose seat of authority was at the Western
India port. They continued in captivity until the end of
the year when Story, having appealed to the local author­
ities in a tender place by turning monk, secured the release
of the entire party. Two sureties had to be found for the
good behaviour of the wanderers, and these were forth­
coming in the persons of two Jesuits, one of whom, it is
interesting to note, was Thomas Stevens, of New College>
Oxford, who arrived in Goa by way of the Cape in 1570,
and consequently was probably the first Englishman
who ever visited India.
Newberry settled down in Goa, but Fitch and Lecdes,
finding the life of the Portuguese city irksome, contrived
to escape into native territory. After various vicissitudes
Leedes took service under the Great Mogul and disappears
from history at the court of that monarch. Fitch con­
tinued his travels, visiting in turn Ceylon, Bengal, Pegu,
Siam, Malacca and other parts of Malaya. He returned
home overland in April/1501, after an odyssey which had
brought him into contact with many of the centres of
Eastern life from the Mediterranean to the China Sea.
An account written by Fitch of his prolonged wander­
ings is to be found in the useful pages of Hakluyt. It is
a matter-of-fact narrative in which the utilitarian rather
than the romantic side of the tour is presented. As a