the Falkland Islands.[1] Other South-Sea voyages, made by Andrew Merrick in 1589, and by Sir Richard Hawkins in 1593, added little or nothing to geographical knowledge; and the same may be said of the voyage for the discovery of a north-west passage, undertaken in 1602, by Captain George Weymouth, at the joint expense of the Russia and Turkey companies.
By this time, also, a direct commercial intercourse with India had been opened by the English. In 1581 a number of eminent merchants were incorporated into a company for trading to Turkey, to which country the charter declared that they had, at their own great costs and charges, found out and opened a trade "not heretofore in the memory of any man now living known to be commonly used and frequented byway of merchandise." Wishing to engage in the trade to India, this company, in 1583, dispatched Messrs. Newbury and Fitch to Tripoli in Syria, from which they proceeded to Bagdad, and thence down the Tigris and the Persian Gulf to Ormus, where they embarked for Goa. Newbury died in India, but Fitch, after having visited Agra, Bengal, Pegu, Ceylon, and Cochin, returning by Goa, Ormus, and Aleppo, arrived again in England in April, 1591. A trade, however, carried on by this overland route, could never have enabled the English merchants to compete with their Portuguese rivals; and before Fitch's return this had come to be generally felt. It appears that, in 1589, a petition was presented to the queen from sundry merchants, requesting permission to make a trading adventure to India by sea. On the 10th of April, 1591, nearly at the very moment at which Fitch made his reappearance, three ships, fitted out by the chief members of the Turkey Company, sailed from Plymouth for the Cape of Good Hope, one of which, commanded by Captain Lancaster, after suffering many disasters, reached India, and took in a cargo of pepper and other spices at Sumatra and Ceylon. But, having afterwards set out for the West Indies, Lancaster there lost his ship,
- ↑ See Barney's Discoveries in the South Sea, vol. ii. p. 103.
