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252 and was left with his crew on the uninhabited island of Mona, near Hispaniola, from which he was brought home to Europe by a French vessel in May, 1594, after having been absent about three years and two months. Three other ships, sent out for India and China in 1596 by Sir Robert Dudley and some other London merchants, were still more unfortunate. Meanwhile the war with Spain and Portugal had cut off the usual supply of Oriental productions by the medium of the latter country, in consequence of which the price of pepper is said to have been raised from three to eight shillings per pound, and the prices of other commodities in the same proportion, none being to be had except from the Dutch, who had gone into the India trade in 1595, and were already carrying it on with great success. In 1599 the merchants of the Turkey Company made another attempt to establish a land trade with India by dispatching a Mr. Mildenhall to the court of the Great Mogul at Agra; but he did not reach that capital till the year 1603, and, although he afterwards obtained important commercial privileges for the company from the Mohammedan emperor, his proceedings do not belong to the history of the present period. In the mean time the scheme of an East India trade, to be carried on by sea, and independently of the Turkey Company, had at last been taken up with effect. On the 22nd of September, 1599, the lord mayor, aldermen, and principal merchants of London, to the number of about a hundred, assembled at Founders' Hall, and united themselves into an association for trading to India, for which purpose they subscribed on the spot a capital of above 30,000l. At a subsequent meeting they drew up a petition to the privy council, in which they represented that, stimulated by the success which had attended the voyages to the East Indies already made by the Dutch, who were then fitting out another voyage, for which they had bought ships in England, the associated merchants had resolved upon making a voyage of adventure of the same kind, and for that purpose entreated that her majesty would grant them letters patent of incorporation, succession, &c., seeing that the proposed trade,