We Have Been Thus Particular In Detailing This Dispute Between These Companies, Partly Because It Points Out The State Of

The Levant Company and their commerce, at the close of the seventeenth century, but principally because it unfolds one of

The principal causes of their decline; for, though some little notice of it will afterwards occur, yet its efforts were feeble, and its success diminished, chiefly by the rivalry of the East India Company.

The Levant trade, as we have seen, was gradually obtained by the English from the hands of the Venetians and other foreign powers. The trade we are next to notice was purely of English origin and growth; - we allude to the trade between England and Russia, which began about the middle of the sixteenth century. The discovery of Archangel took place, as we have already related, in 1553. Chanceller, who discovered it, obtained considerable commercial privileges from the Czar for his countrymen. In 1554, a Russian Company was established; but before their charter, the British merchants had engaged in the Russian trade. The first efforts of the company seem to have been confined to attempts to discover a north-east passage. Finding these unsuccessful, they turned their attention to commerce: they fortunately possessed a very enterprising man, peculiarly calculated to foster and strengthen an infant trade, who acted as their agent. He first set on foot, in 1558, a new channel of trade through Russia into Persia, for raw silk, &c. In the course of his commercial enquiries and transactions, he sailed down the Volga to Nisi, Novogorod, Casan, and Astracan, and thence across the Caspian Sea to Persia. He mentions that, at Boghar, which he describes as a good city, he found merchants from India, Persia, Russia, and Cathay, - from which last country it was a nine months journey to Boghar. He performed his journey seven different times. It appears, however, that this channel of trade was soon afterwards abandoned, till 1741, when it was resumed for a very short time, during which considerable quantities of raw silk were brought to England by the route followed by the Russian agent in the sixteenth century. The cause of this abandonment during the sixteenth century seems to have been the length and danger of the route; for we are informed that one of the adventures would have proved exceedingly profitable, had not their ships, on their return across the Caspian, with Persian raw silk, wrought silks of many kinds, galls, carpets, Indian spices, turquois stones, &c., been plundered by Corsair pirates, to the value of about 40,000_l_. The final abandonment of this route, in the eighteenth century, arose partly from the wars in Persia, but principally from the extension of India commerce, which being direct and by sea, would, of course supply England much more cheaply with all eastern goods than any land trade. Beside the delay, difficulty, and danger of the route from the Volga, already described, the route followed in the sixteenth century, till the merchants reached the Volga, was attended with great difficulty.

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