The Portuguese remained in undisturbed possession of the lucrative trade with India till the end of the sixteenth century, when the United Provinces of the Low Countries challenged their pretensions to an exclusive right of commerce in the East; and in 1595, the Dutch East India Company was formed. The English soon followed, and five years later (in 1600) the British East India Company was incorporated by Royal Charter. It immediately obtained from the native princes permission to establish forts and factories, and in 1624 was invested with powers of government. The Portuguese monopoly and predominance in the East was overturned and crushed, and England and Holland attained supremacy in naval power and commercial wealth. The cotton trade did not so quickly benefit by this as might have been expected. It remained stationary for more than a century afterwards. But in 1738 commenced the history of those wonderful inventions which by giving the power of almost unlimited production to our people revolutionized the manufacturing world. England, which two centuries ago imported only £5000 worth of raw cotton, now pays more than £40,000,000 (forty million pounds) sterling every year for her supply for twelve months;[44] and as this supply is drawn from every quarter of the globe, she can appreciate the effect upon her cotton trade of the various maritime discoveries mentioned in these pages. From the country discovered by Columbus, and populated chiefly by her own offspring, England receives by far the largest portion of her requirements. The route round Cape Horn, discovered by Fernando Magalhaens in 1520, has its advantages as another road to the colonies and Eastern possessions of Great Britain. The course round the Cape of Good Hope, by which Vasco da Gama navigated his ships to Calicut, was for three and a half centuries the main road between India and Western Europe for personal intercourse, as well as the conveyance of heavy goods, such as cotton; and, though long, it was direct, and comparatively cheap. But the superiority of the first sea-route originally established by the foresight and genius of the great Macedonian conqueror was demonstrated in 1845, when Lieutenant Waghorn, a young officer in the service of the East India Company, with invincible ardour, and determined perseverance against official obstruction and innumerable obstacles, once more made Egypt the causeway between Europe and India. Alexandria, built on a site admirably chosen by its founder as a centre of commercial traffic, and placed by the prudence of his engineers just sufficiently far from the outflow of the Nile to be free from the danger of its harbour being silted up by the sediment of that muddy river, again became the port of arrival and departure: but increased skill in seamanship and the command of steam power having diminished the risk and difficulty of navigating the upper part of the Red Sea, Suez, the ancient Arsinoe, was selected