ABSTRACT

This chapter is concerned with extends from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf and from the Mediterranean to the Sahara and the Arabian Sea. It comprises North Africa within the Straits of Gibraltar, Egypt and the valley of the Nile, Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian peninsula, the Fertile Crescent and Asia Minor. The parts of it about which the classical writers had known least were inland Arabia, and Ethiopia. Neither western Arabia nor Ethiopia was of any political interest to the English government and neither was at all easy of access to European traders; no Englishman is known to have visited either until long after this date. Principall navigations begins with short accounts of medieval English visitors to the East. Most medieval English travellers to the East of whom we have any knowledge were either crusaders or pilgrims. The narratives of English pilgrims which Richard Hakluyt ignored were nearly all in manuscript in his time.