L

to the

at length. Thorne, who was a native of Bristol and a friend of the Cabots, dwelt long in Seville, and his writings show traces of the later sententious courtly style which Guevara brought to perfection. In 1513 he exhorted King Henry to take the business of discovery in hand; fourteen years later, at the request of the English ambassador, he expounded his ideas at length. The world, he says, has been divided. between the Kings of Spain and of Portugal, and he gives an account of the contested ownership of the Philippines, which he takes to be the richest prize of all. For the preciousness of these things is measured after the distance that is between us and the things that we have appetite unto; moreover, the inhabitants of these spice islands set more by a knife and a nail of But the way The Spaniards

The way iron than by his quantity of gold.' to these islands is barred to us.

Spice
Islands.

hold the westward route, by the Straits of Magellan; the Portuguese the eastward, by the Cape of Good Hope. The English have left to them but one way to discover, and that is by the North. If the seas toward the North be

navigable, we may go to these spice islands a shorter way by two thousand leagues than Spain and Portugal, who have each of them more than four thousand leagues to traverse. 'And,' says Master Thorne, anticipating an objection which, forty years later, became a burning question of practical politics, though we went not to the said islands, for that they are the Emperor's, or King's of Portingale, we should by the way, and coming once to the line equinoctial, find lands no less rich of gold and spicery, as all other lands are under the said line equinoctial; and also should, if we may pass under the North, enjoy the navigation of all Tartary, which should be no less profitable to our commodities of cloth, than these spiceries to the Emperor and King of Portingale.' But the Northern seas, it may be objected, are blocked with ice; and the Northern lands are too cold Perils of the North. for man to dwell in. To which objection Master Thorne replies in a single sentence, fit to be inscribed as a head-line on the charter of Britannia-There is no land unhabitable, nor sea innavigable.

It was in this belief, and in this heroic temper, that England set herself to take possession of her heritage, the North. The adventures to the North West had been but poorly rewarded; and for a time attention was turned to the possibility of reaching Cathay by way of the North East. At the close of the reign of Edward VI Voyages. a Company of Merchant Adventurers was

The

North
East

formed for the discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and places unknown'; Sebastian Cabot, now in advanced old age, was made its governor ; and in May, 1553, three ships, under the leadership of Sir Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancelor, were despatched for the Northern coasts of Asia. They carried with them letters from King Edward VI, written in Latin, and opportunely addressed to all Kings, Princes, Rulers, Judges, and Governors of the Earth, and all other having any excellent dignity on the same, in all places under the universal heaven.' Willoughby and Chancelor were separated by a storm, and Willoughby, after reaching Nova Zembla, put back and landed. with his two ships' companies on the coast of

Chancelor.

with

Lapland. Here they wintered, and here they all died of cold and hunger. Chancelor, with Richard his single ship, had better fortune. He too was obliged to turn back, but he established friendly relations with the fisher folk in the neighbourhood of the White Sea, and, when news of the visit of strangers reached the Emperor of Russia, he was invited with all his company to the Court at Moscow. His account of the Kingdom of Muscovy led the Merchant Adventurers to concentrate their efforts on developing trade with Russia, and gave a motive to further Trade voyaging. Chancelor himself was cast away Russia. and drowned on the coast of Scotland in 1556, as he was bringing the first Russian ambassador to the Court of England, but his work went on. Stephen Burrough, who had served under him, in the same year explored the coast of Nova Zembla; and Anthony Jenkinson, in 1558, went as far as Bokhara to seek for an overland route to Cathay. The last of the North Eastern voyages was undertaken by Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman in the year 1580. They sailed as far as the Sea of Kara, but the ice and fogs

were too much for them; Jackman never reached home, and the failure of the expedition cast grave doubts on the possibility of reaching Cathay by the North East. By this time, moreover, Frobisher's voyages to the North West had awakened hopes of gold to be found in that inhospitable region; and Hawkins and Drake, by their exploits in the Spanish Indies, had begun a new era in English navigation, and given a new direction to English policy. In the excitement of these later developments the North East passage was forgotten.

of

When the North West attempt, after a lapse

many years, was again taken up, it led to farreaching consequences. The only incidental gain of the North Eastern voyages was the establishment of trading relations with Russia. There was no word of treasure to be found on the frozen Siberian coast, no prospect of settlement there, and the voyagers came into conflict with no rival nations. The search for gold, the beginnings of colonisation, and the gradual entanglement of England in a death-struggle with Spain are developments intimately con