Having settled all these matters with the Clove, we resumed our voyage for England on the 4th January, and came to anchor in Saldanha bay on the 21st March, where we got a sufficient supply of beeves and sheep from the natives, with abundance of fish, caught in our own seine.  We left that place on the 9th April, with prosperous winds, which continued favourable till we were three degrees north of the equator, which we crossed the 11th May.  When in lat. 00 deg. 22’ N. many of our men began to fall sick, some of them of the scurvy, and with swelled legs.  On the 10th July, 1614, by the blessing of God, we came to anchor in the Downs.

CHAPTER XI.

CONTINUATION OF THE EARLY VOYAGES OF THE ENGLISH EAST INDIA COMPANY TO INDIA.

INTRODUCTION.

In the immediately preceding chapter, we have given a series of the first twelve voyages fitted out by the English East India Company, in the prosecution of their exclusive trade to India, as preserved by Samuel Purchas; and we now mean, chiefly from the same source, to continue the series for a few years longer.  At the close of the last voyage of the foregoing chapter, Purchas informs us, that “The order of reckoning must be now altered, because the voyages of the company were for the future set forth by means of a joint stock, instead of by particular ships, each upon a separate subscription, having separate stocks and factories; the whole proceedings being, in the sequel, at the general risk of, and accountable to the entire society or company of adventurers.”  He farther adds, “That the whole of these joint-stock voyages had not come into his hands; but that such as he had been able to procure, and were meet for publication, he had inserted in his Collection.”

The learned historiographer of the East India Company[120] gives rather a different account of the former series of separate or unconnected voyages, than that which we have taken from Purchas, terming the last voyage in our former chapter only the ninth, while Purchas denominates it the twelfth.

[Footnote 120:  Ann. of the Hon. E.I.  Co, I. 162.]

This difference, which is not at all material, may have arisen from Purchas having considered some of the ships belonging to single adventurers or subscriptions, which made separate voyages or parts of voyages, as separate adventures.  We come now to a new era in the mode of conducting the English exclusive trade to India, of the motives for which the Annals give the following account.[121]

[Footnote 121:  Id.  I. 165.]