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Ormuz and along the coast of Malabar. Although his expedition proved a failure, the merchants of London ascertained from those who had been engaged in it, more fully than they had done from any previous navigators, the immense value of the Eastern trade and the vast profits realisable by its systematic development. Their representations urged the establishment of factories and the carrying on by such agencies a very extensive and lucrative trade. Each successive voyage added to the experience of the shipowning classes, and hence various private individuals undertook similar enterprises, incited, perhaps, as much by the love of adventure as by the hope of profit.

Such were the preludes to the East India Company, by far the largest and most important commercial undertaking recorded in history. Through Mr. Thorne, an English merchant, whom we have already noticed as resident at Seville while Cabot was chief pilot of Spain, a complete knowledge was obtained of the course of the Spanish and Portuguese trade with the East, as he furnished a report on this subject to certain merchants resident in London, many of whom had for some time considered the project of establishing direct relations of their own with India. Consequently in the year 1600, on the petition of Sir John Hart of London, Sir John Spencer, Sir Edward Micheburn, William Candish or Caundish, and more than two hundred other merchants, shipowners, and citizens of London, this great company was formed, having a common seal as a body corporate, under the title of the Governor and Company of merchants trading to the East Indies. The