A SCENE IN INDIA. CHAPTER V ENGLAND'S ATTEMPTS TO EEACH INDIA IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 1499-1599 E Portuguese soon found that they had other rivals in the East besides the Turks. No Chris- tian nation at the end of the fifteenth century seriously disputed the Papal award. But England, France, Ven- ice, and Spain scrutinized its terms with keen eyes, and tried for a share of the Asiatic trade by every means within the strict letter of the Bull and the treaties based upon it. England's century of failures, from 1497 onward, to reach India without infringing that settle- ment, disciplined our nation to distant maritime enter- prise and forms the main subject of this chapter. The Venetians strove to bolster up the old land routes through Syria and Egypt, as against the Cape passage, and outraged Christendom by abetting the Mamluk Sultan in his struggle with Portugal for the 167
