bays, straits, capes, rivers, empires, kingdoms, dukedoms, and territories of each part; with declaration also of their special commodities, and particular wants, which by the benefit of traffic, and intercourse of merchants, are plentifully supplied. From the map he brought me to the Bible, and turning to the hundred and seventh psalm, directed me to the twenty-third and twenty-fourth verses, where I read, "that they which go down to the sea in ships, and occupy by the great waters, they see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep." Which words of the prophet, together with my cousin's discourse, containing things of high and rare delight to my young nature, took in me so deep an impression, that I constantly resolved, if ever I were preferred to the University, where better time and more convenient place might be ministered for these studies, I would, by God's assistance, prosecute that knowledge and kind of literature, the doors whereof (after a sort) were so happily opened before me.

"It cannot be denied, but, as in all former ages, there have been men in our nation full of activity, stirrers abroad, and searchers of the remote parts of the world; so in this most famous and peerless government of her most excellent majesty queen Elizabeth, her subjects, through the special assistance and blessing of God, in searching the most opposite corners and quarters of the world, and to speak plainly, in compassing the vast globe of the earth more than once, have excelled all the nations and people of the earth.

"Lucius Florus, in the very end of his history, "De gestis Romanorum," recordeth as a wonderful miracle, that the Seres, which I take to be the people of Cathay, or China, sent ambassadors to

Rome, to intreat friendship, as moved with the fame of the majesty of the Roman empire. And have not we as good cause to admire, that the kings of the Molucca, and Java major, have desired the favour of her majesty, and the commerce and traffic of her people? Is it not as strange that the born naturals of Japan, and the Phillipines, are here to be seen, agreeing with our climate, speaking our language, and informing us of the state of their eastern habitations? For mine own part, I take it as a pledge of God's further favour both unto us and them: to them especially, unto whose doors I doubt not in time shall be by us carried the incomparable treasure of the truth of Christianity, and of the Gospel, while we use and exercise common trade with their merchants. I must confess to have read in the excellent history entitled, Origines de Joannes Goropius, a testimony of king Henry the Eighth, a prince of noble memory, whose intention was once, if death had not prevented him, to have done some singular thing in this case; whose words, speaking of his dealing to that end with himself, he being a stranger, and his history rare, I thought good, in this place, verbatim to record. "Ante viginti et plus eo annos ab Henrico Kneutto Equite Anglo nomine Regis Henrici arram accepi, qua convenerat, Regio sumptu me totam Asiam, quoad Turcorum et Persarum Regum commendationes, et legationes admitterentur, peragraturum. Ab his enim duobus Asiæ principibus facile se impetraturum sperabat, ut non solum tuto mihi per ipsorum fines liceret ire, sed ut commendatione etiam ipsorum ad confinia quoque daretur penetrare. Sumptus quidem non exiguus erat futurus, sed tanta erat principi cognoscendi aviditas, ut nullis pecuniis ad hoc iter necessariis se diceret parsurum.

O Dignum Regia Majestate animum, O me felicem, si Deus non ante et Kneuettum et Regem abstulisset, quam reversus ab hoc peregrinatione fuissem, &c."

"But as the purpose of David the king to build a house and temple to God was accepted, although Solomon performed it; so I make no question, but that the zeal in this matter, of the aforesaid most renowned prince, may seem no less worthy (in his kind) of acceptation, although reserved for the person of our Solomon, her gracious majesty; whom I fear not to pronounce to have received the same heroical spirit, and most honourable disposition, as an inheritance from her famous father.

"Whereas in the course of this history, often mention is made of many beasts, birds, fishes, serpents, plants, fruits, herbs, roots, apparel, armour, boats, and such other rare and strange curiosities, which wise men take great pleasure to read of, but much more contentment to see; herein I myself to my singular delight have been as it were ravished in beholding all the premises gathered together with no small cost, and preserved with no little diligence, in the excellent cabinets of my very worshipful and learned friends Master Richard Garthe, one of the clerks of the petty-bags; and Master William Cope, gentleman-usher to the right honourable and most prudent councellor (the Seneca of our Common-wealth) the Lord Burleigh, High Treasurer of England.

"

"This being the sum of those things which I thought good to admonish thee of, good reader, it remaineth that thou take the profit and pleasure of the work; which I wish to be as great to thee, as my pains and labour have been, in bringing these rare

fruits unto their ripeness; and in reducing these loose papers into this order."

Such were the pious and liberal sentiments of Hackluyt, on the publication of his work upwards of two hundred years ago. Mine is now brought to a conclusion; after a period of fortyseven years, since my first juvenile attempts in the descriptive letters and drawings, which constitute the foundation of these memoirs. During that time the most extraordinary events have occurred in India; many of which are alluded to in the preceding pages.

It has not been my object, neither have I talents to discuss the political, commercial, and military systems in British India; the aggrandisement of that part of the empire has of late years been rapid and wonderful. Reverting to the middle of the seventeenth century, we find the English possessions in India consisted of two factories, situated on the banks of the Hughly river; with an ensign's guard of thirty men, stationed there for the protection of property; they were limited to this number by the jealous policy of the emperor Aurungzebe and his predecessors, who would not allow the factors to build even the slightest garden wall, from a fear of its being converted into a fortification. Such was the commencement of the British establishment in Bengal.

In the year 1638, Mr. Langhorne, agent for the English East India Company, purchased the village of Madras-patana, with a small district on the sea-coast of Coromandel, from the Hindoo rajah, for the East India Company. This village was soon after surrounded by a wall, and a castle called Fort St. George was erected

there in 1640. This being a purchase, no objection was made. to the circumvallation. And from this small beginning arose the extensive dominions now belonging to the East India Company, under the Presidency of Madras, or Fort St. George.

In less than thirty years after these petty establishments in Bengal and Coromandel, the island of Bombay was ceded to the English, on the marriage of Charles the Second with the princess Catherine of Portugal: this was the foundation of the Bombay government, and all its subsequent appendages on the western side of the Indian peninsula. The whole of these settlements, every other British factory in India (including those retained in the eastern islands after the cruel massacre of the Company's servants at Amboyna, by the Dutch) were subordinate to the Governor and Council at Surat; established there, with a supreme authority, by the East India Company in England.

and

It would be foreign to these memoirs to enter on a detail of the history of the English East India Company, or the aggrandisement of the British nation, in the remote regions of Hindostan. This history became generally interesting about the middle of the eighteenth century, in consequence of the unparalleled cruelty of the nabob of Bengal, and the sufferings of the English in the Black Hole at Calcutta, an event which was soon followed by the memorable battle of Plassey, and other gallant exploits in Bengal, by Robert, Lord Clive, the first of that title; which not only amply revenged the perfidious cruelty of the Mahomedan despot, but gave the Company power, wealth, and territory, in the finest provinces of India, where from a set of licensed foreign merchants they became sovereigns of the country.