210 



THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



Lancaster's 

 voyage, 



The East 

 India 

 Company, 

 1600. 



The East 

 India 

 Company 

 is weak, 



Portuguese Empire were revealed ; and the way to act 

 was by wooden walls. 



The English merchants easily understood. Already 

 in 1589, the year after the Armada, they had obtained 

 a licence from the Queen to send three ships in direct 

 trade to India, and in 1591 the first English squadron, 

 under James Lancaster, sailed, by way of the Cape, to 

 the Indian Seas. The voyage was disastrous. Of one 

 hundred and ninety-eight men only twenty-five returned 

 in 1594. But Lancaster had made his voyage. He brought 

 back a " precious cargo of pepper and rich booty." He 

 had convinced the declining Levant Company that it 

 must transform itself into an East India Company, and 

 claim the trade of the Pacific. In 1600 they obtained 

 a Charter which granted the exclusive privilege of trade 

 with all lands beyond the Cape of Good Hope and the 

 Straits of Magellan, except those. lands actually possessed 

 by Christian princes in amity with the Queen. Among 

 the lands not actually possessed by friendly Christians 

 was Terra Australis Incognita. 



The English East India Company was in its early years 

 a somewhat weakly body. The ventures were ventures, 

 not of the whole Company, but of separate groups of mem- 

 bers. It was not till the days of Cromwell, " the first ruler 

 of England to realise that the Indian trade was a concern 

 of the nation/' that the Company was transformed " from 

 a feeble relic of medieval trade guild into a vigorous 

 fore-runner of the modern Joint Stock Company." The 

 Stuart Kings regarded it as their creature, and violated 

 its charter whenever it seemed to mean minds that money 

 could thereby be made. To the Parliament, accordingly, 

 it appeared to be a suspicious institution, liable to become 

 a source of extra-Parliamentary revenue. Economists 

 described it as a " canker of the Commonwealth." In 

 the West Indies you could get " gold, silver and precious 

 things for beads, bells, knives, looking-glasses, and such 

 toys and trifles." But in the East Indies you paid out 

 solid gold and got unlasting spices. The Company sought 

 to argue that they were a Hercules yet in the cradle. 



