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.
WHEN the long reign of Elizabeth was drawing towards its splendid close there was planted in the minds of Englishmen a mighty idea. Their conception 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 destinies. 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 in the imagination, created an interest in strange peoples
