Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/200

Rh English in Persia. Dutch enter- prise. 186 of the company to Japan ; and in 1613 the Japanese Govern- 1nent granted privileges to the Company; but the English retired in 1623, giving up their factory. The chief result of this early intercourse between England and Japan was the interesting series of letters written by William Adams from 1611 to 1617. Adams, however, though an English- man, went to Japan in a Dutch ship. From the tenth voyage of the East India Company, commanded by Captain permanent English factories on the coast of India. It was Captain Best who secured a regular ﬁrman for trade from the Great Mogul. From that time a ﬂeet was despatched every vear, and the Company's operations greatly increased ' geographical knowledge of India and the Eastern Archi- pelago. The visits of Englishmen to Eastern countries, at this time, were not conﬁned to the voyages of the Company. Journeys were also made by land, and, among others, Thomas Coryat, of Odcombe in Somersetshirc, walked from France to India., and died in the Company’s factory at Surat. In 1561 Mr Anthony Jenkinson arrived in Persia with a letter from Queen Elizabeth to the shah. He travelled through Russia to Bokhara, and returned by the Caspian and Volga. In 1579 Christopher Burroughs built a ship at Nijni Novgorod and traded across the Caspian to Baku ; and iii 1598 Sir Anthony and Robert Shirley arrived in Persia, and Robert was afterwards sent by the shah to Europe as his ambassador. He was followed by a Spanish mission under Garcia de Silva, who wrote an interesting account of his travels ,: and to Sir Dormer Cotton’s mission, in 1628, We are indebted for Sir Thomas Herbert’s charm- ing narrative. In like manner, Sir Thomas Roe’s mission to India resulted not only in a large collection of valuable reports and letters of his own, but also in the detailed account of his chaplain Mr Terry. But the most learned and intelligent traveller in the East, during the 17th century, was the German Koempfer, who accompanied an embassy to Persia in 1684, and was afterwards a surgeon in the service of the Dutch East India Company. He was in the Persian Gulf, India, and Java, and resided for more than two years in Japan, from 1690 to 1692. His Ilistory of Japan was published in England in 1727, Koempfer himself having died in 171 6. From these various sources a considerable increase was made in the knowledge of India, Persia, and the further East. The Dutch nation, as soon as it was emancipated from Spanish tyranny, displayed an amount of enterprise which, for a long time, was fully equal to that of England. The memorable Arctic voyages of Barents were quickly followed by the establishment of a Dutch East India Company ; and Holland, ousting the Portuguese, not only established factories on the mainland of India and in Japan, but acquired a preponderating inﬂuence throughout the Eastern Archipelago. In 1583 Jan Hugen van Linschoten made a voyage to India with a Portuguese ﬂeet, and his full and graphic descriptions of India, Africa, China, and the Eastern Archipelago must have been of no small use to his countrymen in the commencement of their distant voyages. The ﬁrst of their Indian voyages was performed by ships which sailed from Holland in April 1595, and rounded the Cape of Good Hope. A second large Dutch ﬂeet sailed in 1598 ; and, so eager was the young republic to extend her commerce over the world that another ﬂeet, consisting of five ships of Rotterdam, was sent in the same year by way of .Iagellan’s Straits, under Jacob Mahu as admiral, with William Adams as pilot. Mahu died on the passage out, and was succeeded by Simon de Cordes, who was killed on the coast of Chili. In September 1599 the ﬂeet had entered the Paciﬁc. The ships were then steered direct GEOGRAPHY eighth voyage, led by Captain Saris, extended the operations ' for Japan, and anchored off‘ Bungo in April 1600. [rnocmzss or l)!SCnYEP.Y. In the very same year, 1598, a third expedition was dcspatchcd under Oliver van Noort, a na.tive of Utrecht. The ﬂeet left Holland in September l-598, and entered the South Sea, ' through the Straits of Magellan, in February 1600, after a tedious, and in truth unskilful, navigation of nearly a year and a half from the time of leaving llolland. After keeping along the west coast of America nearly as far as the line, ' Van Noort shaped a course for the Ladrone Islands, and Best, who left England in 1612, dates the establishment of I arrived off Blanila. In August 1601 he anchored in front of Rotterdam, after an absence of three years, but the voyage contributed nothing to geography. The Dutch Company in 1614 again resolved to send a fleet to the Moluccas by the westward route, and J oris Spill-crgcn was appointed to the command as admiral, with a commission fron1 the States—General. He was furnished with -1 ships of Amsterdam, 2 of Rotterdam, and 1 from Zceland. On May 6, 1615, Spilbergen entered the Paciﬁc Ocean, and touched at several places on the coast of Chili and Peru, defeating the Spanish ﬂeet in a naval engagement oft'('hilca. After plundering Payta and makingrequisitions at Acapulco, the Dutch-ﬂeet crossed the Paciﬁc and reached the Moliiccas in March 1616. At that time the Dutch Company had 37 sail of European shipping and 3000 troops in the East Indies. The Dutch now resolved to discover a passage into the Cape Paciﬁc to the south of Tierra del Fuego, the existence of which was ascertained by Sir Francis Drake. The vessels ﬁtted out for this purpose were the “Ecrdracht,” of 360 tons, commanded by Jacob le Maire, and the “Horn,” of 110 tons, under Jan Schouten. They sailed from the Texcl on June 14, 1615, and by the 20th of January 1616 they were south of the entrance of Magell-an’s Straits. Passing through the strait of Le Maire they came to the southern extremity of Tierra del F uego, which was named Cape Horn, in honour of the town of Horn in West Frieslanrl, of which Schouten was a native. They passed the cape on the 31st of January, encountering the usual westerly winds. The great merit of this discovery of a second passage into the South Sea lies in the fact that it was not'accidcntal or un- foreseen, but was due to the sagacity of those who designed the voyage. 011 March 1 the Dutch ﬂeet sighted the island of Juan Fernandez; and, having crossed the Paciﬁc, the explorers sailed along the north coast of New Guinea, and arrived at the Molnccas on September 17, 1616. In 1623 the Dutch sent expeditions against Brazil and Peru, which, however, did little to advance geographical knowledge, except that the Brazilian invasion resulted in the valuable work of Nieuhof. There were several early indications of the existence of Explon the great Australian continent, which have been very ably discussed by Mr Major; and the Hollanders cndeavourc to obtain further knowledge concerning the country and its extent ; but only its northern and western coasts had been visited before the time of Governor Van Diemen. Dirk Hartog had been on the west coast in latitude 26° 30' S. in 1616. Pelsert struck on a reef called “ IIoutman’s Abrolhos ” on June 4, 1629. In 1697 the Dutch captain Vlamingh landed on the west coast of Australia i11 31° 43' S., and named the Swan River, where he saw some black swans. In 1642 the governor and council of Batavia ﬁtted out two ships to prosecute the discovery of the south land, and entrusted the command to Captain Abel Jansen Tasman. This voyage proved to be the most important to geography that had been unrlcrtaken since the ﬁrst circum- navigation of the globe. Tasman sailed from Batavia in the yacht “ lleemskirk ” on the 14th of August 1642, and from lifauritius on the 8th of October. On November 24 high land was sighted in 42° 31 1' S., which was named Van Diemen’s Land, and, after landing there, sail was again d Austral