Japan and the Japanese

CHAPTER XX.
ATTEMPT OF THE ENGLISH AND DUTCH TO DISCOVER A NEW EOUTE TO TUB
FAR EAST. VOYAGES ROUND THE WORLD. ATTEMPTED ENGLISH VOYAGE
TO JAPAN. ENGLISH AND DUTCH VOYAGES TO INDIA. FIRST DUTCH
VOYAGE TO JAPAN. ADAMS, THE ENGLISH PILOT. HIS ADVENTURES
AND DETENTION IN JAPAN.* A. D. 1513 16U7.
FOR a full century subsequent to the discovery of the passage to
India by the Cape of Good Hope, the commerce of the Indian seas,
so far as Europe was concerned, remained almost a complete monopoly
in the hands of the Portuguese. The ancient Venetian commerce
with India, by the Red Sea, had been speedily brought to an
end, while the trade carried on over land, by way of Aleppo and the
Persian Gulf, was mainly controlled by the Portuguese, who held
possession of Ormus, through which it mostly passed. Xor did the
Spanish discovery of another .passage to India, by the Straits of
Magellan, and the lodgment which the Spaniards made about the
year 1570, in the Philippine Islands, very materially interfere with
the Portuguese monopoly. The passage by the Straits of Magellan
was seldom or never attempted, the Spanish trade being confined to
two annual ships between Acapulco and Manilla.
It was the desire to share in this East India commerce (which
made Lisbon the wealthiest and most populous city of Europe), that
led to so many attempts to discover a north-eastern, a north-western
and even a northern passage to India (directly over the pole), not
only as shorter, but as avoiding any collision with the Portuguese
and Spanish, who did not hesitate to maintain by force their respective
exclusive claims to the passages by the Cape of Good Hope
* This chapter, also the twenty-second, is taken, \vith alterations and
addition?, from an article (written by the compiler of this work) in Har
ver's Magazine for Jan., 1854.