A notable addition to the " Broadway Travellers " series
is The First Englishmen in India, edited by Mr. J. Courtenay Locke (Routledge, 10s. 6d.). Here are conveniently brought together, with maps, old prints and full notes, the narratives of the sturdy Elizabethan merchants, who travelled to India• and whose reports of their experiences led to the founding of the East India Company. The very first Englishman to reach India was the young Jesuit, Father Thomas Stevens, of Winchester and Oxford, who went to Goa in 1579 and died there forty years later. The merchants who set out in 1583 were Eldred, Newbery and Fitch, with Leedes, a jeweller, and Story, a painter. Eldred stayed in Meso- potamia to act as agent for his colleagues, while the others went on. Newbery and Fitch were arrested by the Portuguese at Goa, but escaped and travelled far and wide. Fitch, indeed, went to Burma and Malaya. His description of, Benares, with the devotees washing in the Ganges, has a very modern ring, for such rites do not change. When Fitch- returned home after eight years, he became one of the chief promoters of the new Indian trade which was to have unforeseen importance for England. His concise and prosaic reports, as Hakluyt saw, are thus very precious. * * * *
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