TO THE INDIES NORTHWARD--ENGLISH, FRENCH, DUTCH, AND RUSSIAN ROUTES
The discovery of the New World had the most important consequences
on the relative importance of the different nations of Europe.
Hitherto the chief centres for over two thousand years had been
round the shores of the Mediterranean, and, as we have seen, Venice,
by her central position and extensive trade to the East, had become
a world-centre during the latter Middle Ages. But after Columbus,
and still more after Magelhaens, the European nations on the Atlantic
were found to be closer to the New World, and, in a measure, closer
to the Spice Islands, which they could reach all the way by ship,
instead of having to pay expensive land freights. The trade routes
through Germany became at once neglected, and it is only in the
present century that she has at all recovered from the blow given
to her by the discovery of the new sea routes in which she could
not join. But to England, France, and the Low Countries the new
outlook promised a share in the world's trade and affairs generally,
which they had never hitherto possessed while the Mediterranean
was the centre of commerce. If the Indies could be reached by sea,
they were almost in as fortunate a position as Portugal or Spain.
Almost as soon as the new routes were discovered the Northern nations
attempted to utilise them, notwithstanding the Bull of Partition,
which the French king laughed at, and the Protestant English and
Dutch had no reason to respect. Within three years of the return
of Columbus from his first voyage, Henry VII. employed John Cabot,
a Venetian settled in Bristol, with his three sons, to attempt
the voyage to the Indies by the North-West Passage. He appears to
have re-discovered Newfoundland in 1497, and then in the following
year, failing to find a passage there, coasted down North America
nearly as far as Florida.
In 1534 Jacques Cartier examined the river St. Lawrence, and his
discoveries were later followed up by Samuel de Champlain, who
explored some of the great lakes near the St. Lawrence, and established
the French rule in Canada, or Acadie, as it was then called.
Meanwhile the English had made an attempt to reach the Indies,
still by a northern passage, but this time in an easterly direction.
Sebastian Cabot, who had been appointed Grand Pilot of England by
Edward VI., directed a voyage of exploration in 1553, under Sir
Hugh Willoughby. Only one of these ships, with the pilot (Richard
Chancellor) on board, survived the voyage, reaching Archangel, and
then going overland to Moscow, where he was favourably received
by the Czar of Russia, Ivan the Terrible. He was, however, drowned
on his return, and no further attempt to reach Cathay by sea was
attempted.
The North-West Passage seemed thus to promise better than that by
the North-East, and in 1576 Martin Frobisher started on an exploring
voyage, after having had the honour of a wave of Elizabeth's hand
as he passed Greenwich. He reached Greenland, and then Labrador,
and, in a subsequent voyage next year, discovered the strait named
after him. His project was taken up by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, on
whom, with his brother Adrian, Elizabeth conferred the privilege of
making the passage to China and the Moluccas by the north-westward,
north-eastward, or northward route. At the same time a patent was
granted him for discovering any lands unsettled by Christian princes.
A settlement was made in St. John's, Newfoundland, but on the return
voyage, near the Azores, Sir Humphrey's "frigate" (a small boat
of ten men), disappeared, after he had been heard to call out,
"Courage, my lads; we are as near heaven by sea as by land!" This
happened in 1583.
Two years after, another expedition was sent out by the merchants
of London, under John Davis, who, on this and two subsequent voyages,
discovered several passages trending westward, which warranted
the hope of finding a northwest passage. Beside the strait named
after him, it is probable that on his third voyage, in 1587, he
passed through the passage now named after Hudson. His discoveries
were not followed up for some twenty years, when Henry Hudson was
despatched in 1607 with a crew of ten men and a boy. He reached
Spitzbergen, and reached 80° N., and in the following year reached
the North (Magnetic) Pole, which was then situated at 75.22° N. Two
of his men were also fortunate enough to see a mermaid--probably
an Eskimo woman in her _kayak_. In a third voyage, in 1609, he
discovered the strait and bay which now bear his name, but was
marooned by his crew, and never heard of further. He had previously,
for a time, passed into the service of the Dutch, and had guided
them to the river named after him, on which New York now stands. The
course of English discovery in the north was for a time concluded
by the voyage of William Baffin in 1615, which resulted in the
discovery of the land named after him, as well as many of the islands
to the north of America.
Meanwhile the Dutch had taken part in the work of discovery towards
the north. They had revolted against the despotism of Philip II., who
was now monarch of both Spain and Portugal. At first they attempted
to adopt a route which would not bring them into collision with
their old masters; and in three voyages, between 1594 and 1597,
William Barentz attempted the North-East Passage, under the auspices
of the States-General. He discovered Cherry Island, and touched
on Spitzbergen, but failed in the main object of his search; and
the attention of the Dutch was henceforth directed to seizing the
Portuguese route, rather than finding a new one for themselves.
The reason they were able to do this is a curious instance of Nemesis
in history. Owing to the careful series of intermarriages planned
out by Ferdinand of Arragon, the Portuguese Crown and all its
possessions became joined to Spain in 1580 under Philip II., just
a year after the northern provinces of the Netherlands had renounced
allegiance to Spain. Consequently they were free to attack not alone
Spanish vessels and colonies, but also those previously belonging
to Portugal. As early as 1596 Cornelius Houtman rounded the Cape
and visited Sumatra and Bantam, and within fifty, years the Dutch
had replaced the Portuguese in many of their Eastern possessions.
In 1614 they took Malacca, and with it the command of the Spice
Islands; by 1658 they had secured full possession of Ceylon. Much
earlier, in 1619, they had founded Batavia in Java, which they made
the centre of their East Indian possessions, as it still remains.
The English at first attempted to imitate the Dutch in their East
Indian policy. The English East India Company was founded by Elizabeth
in 1600, and as early as 1619 had forced the Dutch to allow them to
take a third share of the profits of the Spice Islands. In order
to do this several English planters settled at Amboyna, but within
four years trade rivalries had reached such a pitch that the Dutch
murdered some of these merchants and drove the rest from the islands.
As a consequence the English Company devoted its attention to the
mainland of India itself, where they soon obtained possession of
Madras and Bombay, and left the islands of the Indian Ocean mainly
in possession of the Dutch. We shall see later the effect of this
upon the history of geography, for it was owing to their possession
of the East India Islands that the Dutch were practically the
discoverers of Australia. One result of the Dutch East India policy
has left its traces even to the present day. In 1651 they established
a colony at the Cape of Good Hope, which only fell into English
hands during the Napoleonic wars, when Napoleon held Holland.
Meanwhile the English had not lost sight of the possibilities of
the North-East Passage, if not for reaching the Spice Islands,
at any rate as a means of tapping the overland route to China,
hitherto monopolised by the Genoese. In 1558 an English gentleman,
named Anthony Jenkinson, was sent as ambassador to the Czar of
Muscovy, and travelled from Moscow as far as Bokhara; but he was
not very fortunate in his venture, and England had to be content
for some time to receive her Indian and Chinese goods from the
Venetian argosies as before. But at last they saw no reason why
they should not attempt direct relations with the East. A company of
Levant merchants was formed in 1583 to open out direct communications
with Aleppo, Bagdad, Ormuz, and Goa. They were unsuccessful at the
two latter places owing to the jealousy of the Portuguese, but
they made arrangements for cheaper transit of Eastern goods to
England, and in 1587 the last of the Venetian argosies, a great
vessel of eleven hundred tons, was wrecked off the Isle of Wight.
Henceforth the English conducted their own business with the East,
and Venetian and Portuguese monopoly was at an end.
[Illustration: RUSSIAN MAP OF ASIA, 1737.]
But the journeys of Chancellor and Jenkinson to the Court of Moscow
had more far-reaching effects; the Russians themselves were thereby
led to contemplate utilising their proximity to one of the best
known routes to the Far East. Shortly after Jenkinson's visit, the
Czar, Ivan the Terrible, began extending his dominions eastward,
sending at first a number of troops to accompany the Russian merchant
Strogonof as far as the Obi in search of sables. Among the troops
were a corps of six thousand Cossacks commanded by one named Vassili
Yermak, who, finding the Tartars an easy prey, determined at first
to set up a new kingdom for himself. In 1579 he was successful in
overcoming the Tartars and their chief town Sibir, near Tobolsk;
but, finding it difficult to retain his position, determined to
return to his allegiance to the Czar on condition of being supported.
This was readily granted, and from that time onward the Russians
steadily pushed on through to the unknown country of the north
of Asia, since named after the little town conquered by Yermak,
of which scarcely any traces now remain. As early as 1639 they
had reached the Pacific under Kupilof. A force was sent out from
Yakutz, on the Lena, in 1643, which reached the Amur, and thus
Russians came for the first time in contact with the Chinese, and
a new method of reaching Cathay was thus obtained, while geography
gained the knowledge of the extent of Northern Asia. For, about
the same time (in 1648), the Arctic Ocean was reached on the north
shores of Siberia, and a fleet under the Cossack Dishinef sailed
from Kolyma and reached as far as the straits known by the name
of Behring. It was not, however, till fifty years afterwards, in
1696, that the Russians reached Kamtschatka.
Notwithstanding the access of knowledge which had been gained by
these successive bold pushes towards north and east, it still remained
uncertain whether Siberia did not join on to the northern part of
the New World discovered by Columbus and Amerigo, and in 1728 Peter
the Great sent out an expedition under VITUS BEHRING, a Dane in the
Russian service, with the express aim of ascertaining this point.
He reached Kamtschatka, and there built two vessels as directed by
the Czar, and started on his voyage northward, coasting along the
land. When he reached a little beyond 67° N., he found no land
to the north or east, and conceived he had reached the end of the
continent. As a matter of fact, he was within thirty miles of the
west coast of America; but of this he does not seem to have been
aware, being content with solving the special problem put before
him by the Czar. The strait thus discovered by Behring, though not
known by him to be a strait, has ever since been known by his name.
In 1741, however, Behring again set out on a voyage of discovery to
ascertain how far to the east America was, and within a fortnight
had come within sight of the lofty mountain named by him Mount
St. Elias. Behring himself died upon this voyage, on an island
also named after him; he had at last solved the relation between
the Old and the New Worlds.
These voyages of Behring, however, belong to a much later stage
of discovery than those we have hitherto been treating for the
last three chapters. His explorations were undertaken mainly for
scientific purposes, and to solve a scientific problem, whereas
all the other researches of Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Dutch
were directed to one end, that of reaching the Spice Islands and
Cathay. The Portuguese at first started out on the search by the
slow method of creeping down the coast of Africa; the Spanish, by
adopting Columbus's bold idea, had attempted it by the western
route, and under Magellan's still bolder conception had equally
succeeded in reaching it in that way; the English and French sought
for a north-west passage to the Moluccas; while the English and
Dutch attempted a northeasterly route. In both directions the icy
barrier of the north prevented success. It was reserved, as we shall
see, for the present century to complete the North-West Passage
under Maclure, and the North-East by Nordenskiold, sailing with
quite different motives to those which first brought the mariners
of England, France, and Holland within the Arctic Circle.
The net result of all these attempts by the nations of Europe to
wrest from the Venetians the monopoly of the Eastern trade was to
add to geography the knowledge of the existence of a New World
intervening between the western shores of Europe and the eastern
shores of Asia. We have yet to learn the means by which the New
World thus discovered became explored and possessed by the European
nations.
[_Authorities:_ Cooley and Beazeley, _John and Sebastian Cabot_,
1898.]