Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/230

 176 and China. In the sea voyages now to be described, it included also the northern shores of Asia. A copious and contentious literature has grown up on the preten- sions of Sebastian, son of John Cabot, to have been the true discoverer of North America, and on his, per- haps juster, claim to have definitely given shape to the conception of a northwest passage to India. The idea of such a passage took possession of the stubborn Eng- lish mind. Of the resolute efforts to convert that idea into an accomplished fact I can narrate only the most mem- orable, drawing from the Calendar of State Papers and from Hakluyt's Voyages. In 1527, Master Robert Thorne addressed a book to Henry VHI's ambassador at the court of Charles V, urging the King of England to become a merchant like the King of Portugal, and advocating in great detail the northwestern route. His father was one of the discoverers of Newfoundland, he himself had dwelt in Seville and adventured 1400 ducats in the Indo-Spanish fleet of 1527, with which sailed " two Englishmen sent to discover * the Islands of the Spiceries.' " " Now then, if from the said New Found Lands the sea be navigable," he argued, " there is no doubt but sailing northward and passing the pole, descending to the equinoctial line, we shall hit these islands, and it should be a much more shorter way than either the Spaniards or the Portugals have." He estimated the length of the Spanish route by the southwest Atlantic at 4200 or 4300 leagues, while the English route by