lar 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