[Footnote 178:

Id.

Ib. p. 3.]

[Footnote 179: A species of moss growing on high rocks, much used in these days in dying. - Astl. I. 138. d.]

"At length, about the middle of the _sixteenth_ century, the English spirit of trade, meeting with favourable circumstances, began to exert itself, and to extend its adventures to the south as well as the north. About the year 1551, Captain Thomas Windham sailed in the ship Lion for Morocco, whither he carried two Moors of the blood-royal. This was the first voyage to the western coast of Africa of which we have any account, and these are all the particulars to be found respecting it; except that one Thomas Alday, a servant to Sebastian Cabot, in a letter inserted in Hakluyt's Collection[180], represents himself as the first promoter of this trade to Barbary, and observes that he would have performed this voyage himself, with the sole command of the ship and goods, had it not been that Sir John Lutterel, John Fletcher, Henry Ostrich, and others with whom he was connected, died of the sweating sickness, and he himself, after escaping that disease, was seized by a violent fever, so that Thomas Windham sailed from Portsmouth before he recovered, by which he lost eighty pounds.

[Footnote 180: Vol. II. p. 7.]

"In the next year, 1552, Windham made a second voyage to _Zafin_ or _Saffi_ and Santa Cruz without the straits, which gave so much offence to the Portuguese, that they threatened to treat the English as enemies if found in these seas.

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