Japan and the Japanese

132 JAPAN. A. D. 1508-1C07.
and the Straits of Magellan. Those atfempts wore at first confined
to the English, beginning with that made by Sebastian Cabot, on
his third and last voyage from England. The Dutch and Jielgi-
ans were long content to buy Indian merchandise at Lisbon,
which they resold in the north of Europe ; but after the union of
the Spanish and Portuguese dominions, in 1580, and the seizure,
which soon followed, of the Dutch ships at Lisbon, and their exclu-
sion from any trade with Portugal, the Dutch began to entertain,
even more ardently than the English, the desire of a direct com-
merce with the far East. Drake, in his voyage round the world
(157780), outward by the Straits of Magellan, and homeward by
the Cape of Good Hope, a track in which he was speedily followed
by Cavendish (1586-8), led the way to the Indian seas ; but the
failure of Cavendish in a second attempt to pass the Straits of Ma-
gellan, and the capture, A. D. 1594, by Spanish-American cruisers
in the Pacific, of Sir Richard Hawkins, a son of the famous Sir
John Hawkins, who had attempted a voyage to Japan by the same
route, served to keep up the terrors of that passage.
Meanwhile, Captain Lancaster, as early as 1592, accomplished
the first English voyage to India by the Cape of Good Hope. After
a rather disastrous voyage, he returned in 1594, having been greatly
delayed by his ignorance of the monsoons. A second expedition, destined
for China, sailed in 159G, but perished miserably at sea. It in
to the Dutch that the credit mainly belongs of first breaking in upon
the Portuguese and Spanish monopoly of Indian commerce.*
Among other Dutch ship captains and merchants who had been
thrown into prison
at Lisbon, was Cornelius Iloutimm, who im
proved that opportunity to acquire, by
conversation with Portu
gucse seamen, a knowledge of the Indian seas ; and it was by his
persuasions that the merchants of Amsterdam, associating as 'an
East India Company, fitted out, in 1095, eight vessels, four to
renew the experiment of a north-eastern passage, and four to pro-
ceed to India by the Cape of Good Hope. The voyage of the first
four, under the direction of Hugh Linschooten,* who had lately
returned from Goa, where he had resided six years in the service of
the archbishop, resulted in the discovery of Nova Zcuibla. beyond
* See Appendix, note E.