Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/41

 DUTCH RIVALRY OF THE ENGLISH 19 voyage under Captain David Middleton met with still stronger opposition after 1609. The Dutch truce with Spain in that year removed the need of any further complaisance to the English. Within ten years after the grant of Elizabeth's Charter, the English found their old Portuguese prey in the Archipelago placed by treaty beyond their grasp, and their old Dutch allies no longer in want of their help, and turned into bitter trade rivals. The simple remedy, as it now appears to us, would have been to withdraw from the contest for the produce of the islands, and to open up a direct traffic with the Asiatic continent. But the simple method is not always the obvious one. The tradition of Eastern commerce was that India yielded only the cheaper spices, pepper, and ginger, and furnished ports for trans-shipment of the more precious ones of the farther East— mace, cin- namon, and cloves. To shift our factories from the Archipelago to India seemed at the time equivalent to giving up the direct trade in the most lucrative com- modities, and sinking into middlemen like the early Arab merchants on the Malabar coast. Nevertheless the English soon began to feel their way toward India itself. The mission of Mildenhall (or Midnall), sent forth by Staper and armed with a letter from Queen Elizabeth in 1599 to the Great Mo- ghul, returned in 1602 with news of the high civilization and boundless resources of the Indian court. Captain Hawkins, of the third voyage (1607), proceeded to the Indian coast with a letter from James I to the Emperor