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 CHAPTER V

How the English went to India

T must have been with somewhat of a thrill that on an August day in 1608 those on board the East India Company's good ship Hector saw above the Eastern horizon the low-lying coastline of Guzerat with its fringing of palm groves and its pleasant background of cultivated land clad in the rich verdure of the season of monsoon rains, now approaching its close. For the first time from the deck of an English ship Englishmen gazed on this fair and spreading scene in which the fabled wealth of India seemed to be so happily typified. None of course could appreciate to the full the deep historic significance underlying this earliest connexion established between the shores of England and India. But there was on board at all events one who of a certainty realized that the occasion was no common one of a trading ship entering an unfamiliar port. This individual was William Hawkins, bearer of a letter from James I to the Great Mogul asking 73