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this
BOOK OF BOMBAY,
AN ATTEMPT
TO ILLUSTRATE
THE HISTORY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF THAT CITY
AND NEIGHBOURHOOD,
IS
RESPECTFULLY
DEDICATED
TO
THE PEOPLE OF BOMBAY,
- OR’ -
EVERY RACE AND CREED,
BY
THE AUTHOR,
\
c->
~
~2
C O N T E N T S.
CHAPTER I.
BOMBAY MARRIAGE TREATY,
Article XI, -Instrument of Possession .................. 3–20
CHAPTER II.
WESTERN INDIA IN 1583,
The Man about Town—King of Ballagat—The
Master-Mariner—Decline and Fall—The Inquisi-
tion—Miscellanea—Archaeological Note on Lin-
schotten .................. . ......................... ... . . . . . . . . . . . . 23—46
CHAPTER III.
BOMBAY BEGINNINGs.
Mortuary Returns—Exchange—Profits of Trade—
The Cotton Trade—The Imports—Freights—
Jovial Times—Bombay Green—Never Taken—
A Sneaker of Bombay Punch—A Home in
Bombay in 1694 ...........................................* * * * * s 49—78.
CHAPTER IV.
GERALD AUNGIER, Gover Nor OF BOMBAY,
Who he was—What he did—Traits—His Silver
Chalice—Where he lived—His House—Conclu-
vi CONTENTS,
CHAPTER W.
SEEVAJEE.
g e ** s - PAGB.
His Country—His Birth—His Person and Character
—His Accomplishments—Part Second—Traits
Bad and Good—His Two Great Crimes—His
Master Passion—Seevajee's Coronation—His
Death • * * * * * * * * * * * * * .................................................101-124
CHAPTER WI,
JKANOJEE ANGRIA AND THE PIRATES OF WESTERN
INDIA.
Early Navigation—Angria's Kolaba–Fleet of See-
vajee—The Commerce assailed by the Pirates—
What he costus—His Crowning Achievement—-
Vengeance—The English Pirate—The Police of
the Indian Seas—Their Cruelties—The Last of
the Angrias—Their Old Haunts—Conclusion—
Supplementary Note ............................. ..........127–156
CHAPTER VII,
BoMBAY, 1750.
Grose's Account—When Grose Landed—Mr. Grose
asked to Supper—AFew Dadies—Subjects of Con-
versation—The Government House—A Colossal
Sundial—The Bombay of 1750–Hornby's Vel-
lard—The Fort—The Dockyard—Cartography of
Bombay—The Towers of Silence—First Parsee
in Europe—A Plucky Woman—Elephanta–His
Portrait of Kanojee Angria—Raighur–Bullion
and Exchange—Native Character—Malabar Hill.159-194
CONTENTS.
vii
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BOOK OF GOMBRoon, 1752-53.
History not Antiquarianism—Mortality Bills—The
Inkstand–Etcetera—The Lord of the Hot Coun-
tries—Four Gradations of Service—People were
here before us—The English Sirnames of
PAGE
Bombay ................................... : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....l.97—214
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AT SUEZ, 1798.
Suez—His Visit and Schemes—Crosses the Red Sea
—State of Feeling in Bombay—The Suez Canal
Horatio Nelson: or Bombay 1775 ...........................217–226
—The Forbes' Loans—Conclusion.....................229–246
CHAPTER XI.
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON IN BOMBAY.
A Love-passage—The Duke's Nose—The Duke of
Wellington in Bombay and Western India—
The Duke in India—The Bombay of his Period
—A Great Dearth of Materials—The Duke's
Triumphalf&ntry into Bombay—The Condition of
the People—Why was Arthur Wellesley here—
His Celebrated March to Poona—Duel; Dis-
cipline at Nagar–Native Opinion of the Duke –
Traits—Here are Two Notabilia—Was the Duke
at Matheran—The Duke of Wellington’s Bom-
bay Residence................. e º e º e º e º ºi º e º 'º e º is tº a s e s e * * * * * * * * * * * * 249–280
viii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XII.
MoUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE,
PAGE
Items—His Popularity—Portrait—Political—Eccen-
tricities—His History of India—Governors of
Bombay—Religious—Character and Accom-
plishments—Biographical................................. 283—302
CHAPTER XIII.
SIR JOHN MALCOLM. #
Priliminary —Calf Country—The Soldiers’ Return—
In Paris—A Big Day—Dinner to the Ettrick
Shepherd—Governor of Bombay—Reductio ad
Absurdum—Viet Armis—Person—Conclusion 305—326.
CHAPTER XIV.
SIR. JAMES MACKINTOSH ; OR BOMBAY 1804 To 1812.
Bombay a Dull Place—The Diary and Letters of
Mackintosh—He did Good Work in Bombay—
A Quiet Day at Parell—A Noisy Day at Taralla—
Calls—On the Judgment Seat—An Unspoken.
Bombay Sermon—Mackintosh and Wilson ...329—352.
CHAPTER XV.
POONA AND THE PESHWAS,
A Retrospect ......................................................... 355–368.
CHAPTER XVI.
SEEVAJEE's ForTs.
TORNA. ........ ......................................................... 371—381
THE FORT OF RAJMACHEE, NEAR KHANDALA.
The Bombay Forts—The Road to it—The Look-out—
Condition of the People—Streams .................. 382–397
CONTENTS. ‘. ix
THE FORT OF RAIGHUR.
PAG I.
Raighur Ho–View of Nagotna Creek from Bom-
bay—Pachad and the Staircase–Position—De-
scriptive—Architecture—A View from Raighur
—Why Seevajee Chose Raighur—The English
Embassy—Nil Desperandum—The Burst of the
Monsoon—TheCoronation—Portrait—How they
Spend the Time—A Transaction in Piece-Goods
—Seewajee and the English—Its Memories ...... 398–434
CHAPTER XVII.
BEEJAPOOR. tº
Meadows Taylor—The Accommodation—Tombs—
Doves—Sheep and Dogs—Famine—The Country
about Beejapoor—Globe-trotters ..................... 437–456
. . . . . CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MARTYRS OF TANNA.
Note on the Gold of Ophir....................................... 459—470
CHAPTER XIX.
THE HON’BLE E. I. CoMPANY's FIRST SHROFF IN
GUJARAT.
Trawadi Shri Krishna, Arjunji Nathji of Surat...... 473–482
CHAPTER XX.
JAMES FORBES.
His Book—Arrival in Bombay—Ways and Means
—His Library—James Forbes and the Ladies of
Bombay—Diana and the Cobra—The Execution
of Gassi Ram—Natural History of Bombay—
Notable Things—The Oriental Memoirs—The
Apostle—His Attachment to Bombay—Home—
Forbes’s Vicw from Malabar Hill..................... 485-516
X CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXI.
t PAGH;
Dr. Wilson 519–542
* * * * * * * * * * s is e e º ºs e º e º e s s e s is e s se e s - e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. g. 6 º' tº e º e o 'º - tº
CHAPTER XXII.
BOMBAY DIRECTORY-1792.
The Honorable Mayor's Court—The Honorable
Court of Appeals—List of Merchants ............... 545–550
CHAPTER XXIII.
TWELVE VIEWS OF BOMBAY.
The Doctor, 1673–The Philosopher, 1804—The Tra-
veller, 1812—The Soldier, 1818–The Bishop,
1825—The Governor, 1830—The Geologist, 1855–
The Cicerone, 1859—The Presbyter, 1866—The
Editor from a Balloon, 1877—The Agriculturist,
1879—Sir Richard Temple, 1879 ........ tº e º 'º º & © tº e º O & © e º e 553–558
CHAPTER XXIV.
BoMBAY, SoCIAL AND POLITICAL, TWELVE VIEWS.
An Eye-witness, 1690—The Muslim, 1694—The
Statesman, 1707–The Political Economist, 1775
—The Civilian—Ces gens la, 1765-83–La femme
Anglaise—Mackintosh's Bombay, 1804-11—The
Missionary, 1811—The Persian—The Chota
Sahib, 1830–L’Inde Occidentale Poona, 1832–
The Censorious, 1854–Excelsior........................561—566
PR E FA C E.
tº-ºººººººººº.
WE make no apology for presenting these
sketches in a collected form to the reader. They
have already been kindly received through the
press by the Bombay public ; and the Bombay
Government and the Director of Public Instruc-
tion have generously awarded their patronage to
the publication, for which I thank them. They
are the work of an unprofessional pen, during
intervals of leisure.
“I am a plain man, and I think if I had
pitten my materials into better hands, I would
have dune better.”
No doubt of it; but they must now go forth
as they are to the public, with all their sins upon
them.
They have been written in the interests of
good government.
They do not aspire to the dignity, the philo-
sophy, or even the rigid accuracy of History, and
* Elliot Warburton in Dariem,
xii - PR.EFACE.
pretend to no special sources of information but
what are open to the public.
They presume, however, by way of endeavour,
to illustrate one of the noblest episodes in the
Colonial History of England, the rise and growth,
amid many difficulties, of a great city on the
shores of Asia, with some account of the men
who have distinguished themselves in its History.
Why do men, after a long residence in a
foreign country, set such store on their place of
abode The answer is Patria est ubicunque
bene est.
But Bombay over and above this has special
and great attractions. .
For beauty of situation it is “the joy of the
whole earth,” unrivalled, at all events, in the
Eastern dominions of Queen Victoria.
Its geographical position is also unrivalled.
When Sir JAMES MACKINTosh resided in Bombay,
it was considered the most obscure corner of
India. The Suez Canal has now made of it
the key of Asia.
The Time in which we live seems to bridge
two vast eras, and we stand midway between the
old and the new. We have witnessed the end of
one era, and are now the spectators of another,
the era of steamers, railways, and telegraphs, and
PR.EFACE. xiii
have seen what no generation has seen before,
nor will ever see again. i
It is at such a time that one sits down to re-
member that Bombay has a history before the
opening of the Suez Canal, and I have written
to little purpose if these essays fail in convey-
ing to the reader an exhibition of moral strength
and a tenacity of purpose unexampled in the
History of Colonisation.
The spectacle of this lone and isolated commu-
nity, battling for existence for a hundred years,
and upholding the banner and the honour of
England, is a noble one, and not devoid of moral
grandeur. Strange to say it attracted little or no
attention at home.
In the Diary of JoHN EVELYN, one of the most
accomplished men of his day, and who was in
the thick of politics, 1660 to 1705, that is, during
the reigns of Charles II., James II., and William
III., and which embraces every notable event of
his time, there is no mention of Bombay, and yet
this was the time during which were laid the
foundations of our dominion in Western India.
One word more. The writer has kept steadily
before him the condition of the people. Are
the subject peoples better or worse off than they
were under the former native governments of
xiv PREFACE,
Western India? A question of much import, and
of more import to the native populations of these
countries, than it is even to the ruling class.
The answer which is contained in these papers
is this, that the Governments we supplanted in
Western India were unequal to the task of
guaranteeing life and property to their subjects ;
that they were out of the pathway of human
progress, and did not assist in any way the onward
march of Civilisation. This is not an English
view of the subject, but is and must be the view
of every man who can distinguish right from
wrong, or the difference between a good govern-
ment and a bad government. It thus resolves
itself into a matter of fact, not a matter of con-
jecture. The writer has no interested motive to
serve in these essays. He is not a servant of
the Government of India.
According to the verdict of History it was
perfectly open to him in view of the facts to
write either one way or the other.
The facts left no other course open to him,
than to denounce these Governments as the
enemies of mankind.
What destiny is reserved for this great com-
munity of Bombay, God only knows. Population
and opulence have increased, and may increase
PR.EFACE. XW.
with giant strides, but we can scarcely imagine a
time when the story of its early history will
cease to interest, or its example be without effect
"upon future generations.
I write this from the Bay of Naples, which
recalled to Sir John MALcol M, the glorified image
of his beloved Bombay.
June 10th, 1882.
|
BOMBAY MARRIAGE TREATY,
CHAPTER I.
BOMBAY MARRIAGE TREATY.
The Portugalls have choused us it seems on the Island of
Bombay.—Samvwel Pepys.
THE train of circumstances which ended in the
establishment of the English in Bombay is cer-
tainly as wonderful as anything on record. A
group of grey-headed sinners living in London,
and another group living in Lisbon, decree that
the island of Bombay shall constitute part of a
dowery of a Portuguese girl who shall marry
Charles II., King of England. The island is
12,000 miles away, and none of them have seen
it, except on the map. It does not matter. The
deed is done, and, as Sayeth the clown in the
circus—“Here we are l’’
What we were bound to receive was Tangier,
4 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Bombay and £500,000. Tangier nearly fell into
the hands of the Moors. We ultimately received
Bombay without its dependencies, and the money
payment dwindled down to £200,000 in bills,
with some bills of lading of sugar and coffee
cargoes to be realised in London. It is related
that shortly after this time a gibbet was erected
at Lord Clarendon’s gate by the populace of
London, on which was printed—
Three sights to be seen
Dunkirk, Tangier, and a barren Queene.
For anything we were the better they might
have added “ Bombay Green,” without injuring
the rhyme or reason of the inuendo. And had
the public known as much as we know now, it
would have been there. The whole business was
a pure swindle. At this very moment there lay
in the strong box of Clarendon a secret article of
the marriage treaty, the existence of which was
carefully concealed from the public, by which, in
consideration of these forts and the gold that fell
into the lap of Barbara Palmer, we were bound
neck and heel to fight the battles of Portugal
through thick and thin in India. In this way,
without our consent being asked or given, were
our lives and liberties signed away. Hume and
\
BOMBAY MARRIAGE TREATY. 5
Macaulay doubtless knew of this secret article,
but neither they nor James Mill allude to it, and
it is strange that Mackintosh, whom we claim
as a Bombay man, passes it over in silence.
We are indebted to Bruce, the paid and
painstaking annalist of the East India Com-
pany, for searching out the details which we
now give, with the regret that such a dis-
graceful document should smudge one page of
the History of England. Had the statesmen
of Portugal been strong enough to exact its
stipulations (they soon became effete), or had
Our relations with Holland remained the same
as they were when the treaty was signed, we
Would have seen a new and startling evolu-
tion of events. The Portuguese in India appa-
rently soon knew of it. When hard pressed
by the Mahrattas at Bassein, in 1739, they
sent a wail across the water. But our
tender mercies were cruel. On the security
of some old brass guns and church plate,
a unique collateral security, we advanced them
Rs. 15,000. Governor Hornby knew of this
secret treaty, and refers to it, for in 1780,
when they again asked assistance, he refused
it, and told them to pay us the money
already due to us. We are indeed told
6 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
by a recent historian” that this bond of alliance or
marriage treaty is the foundation of all our terri-
torial possessions in the East Indies, and remains
unbroken to the present day. We are sorry to
hear it, and don’t believe it, as far as this secret
article is concerned. Both lawgiver and histo-
rian unite in common to treat it as a dead-letter
and consign it to oblivion.
The foundation of English dominion in Bom-
bay lies in the 11th article of the Marriage
Treaty, concluded 23rd June, 1661, between his
Majesty Charles II., King of Great Britain, and
Alfonsus VI., King of Portugal. Here it is:—
ARTICLE XI.
That for the better improvement of the English interest
and commerce in the East Indies, and that the King of
Great Britain may be better enabled to assist, defend,
and protect the subjects of the King of Portugal in those
parts, from the power and invasion of the States of the
United Provinces, the King of Portugal, with the assent
and advice of his Council, gives, transfers, and by these
presents, grants and confirms, to the King of Great Brit-
ain, his heirs and successors, for ever, the port and island
of Bombay, in the East Indies, with all the rights, profits,
territories, and appurtenances whatsoever thereunto be-
longing, and, together with the income and revenue, the
• Lives of the Queens of England,-Agnes Strickland, 1851.
13OMIBAY MARRIAGE TREATY. 7
direct, full, and absolute dominion and sovereignty of the
said port, island, and premises, with all their royalties,
freely, fully, entirely, and absolutely. He also covenants
and grants that the quiet and peaceable possession of the
same shall, with all convenient speed, be freely and effect-
ually delivered to the King of Great Britain, or to the
persons thereto appointed by the said King of Great
Britain, for his use, in pursuance of this ceSsion, the in-
habitants of the said island (as subjects of the King of
Great Britain, and under his sovereignty, crown, jurisdic-
tion, and government) being permitted to remain there,
and to enjoy the free exercise of the Roman Catholic reli-
gion, in the same manner as they do at present. It being
always understood, as it is now declared, once for all, that
the same regulation shall be observed for the exercise and
preservation of the Roman Catholic religion in Tangier,
and all other places which shall be ceded and delivered
by the King of Portugal into the possession of the King
of Great Britain, as were stipulated and agreed to on the
surrender of Dunkirk into the hands of the English ; and
when the King of Great Britain shall send his fleet to
take possession of the said port and island of Bombay,
the English shall have instructions to treat the subjects
of the King of Portugal, throughout the East Indies, in
the most friendly manner, to help and assist them, and
to protect them in their trade and navigation there.
The Treaty of Surrender and Delivery to Hum-
phrey Cooke on the 18th February, 1665, was
unearthed a quarter of a century ago from the
archives of Goa by Major T. B. Jervis. This
8 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
treaty was signed in a large house of the Lady
Donna Ignez Miranda, widow, elsewhere desig-
nated the lady proprietrix of Bombay, and pos-
sessed of the manor right thereof. It was never
ratified by the sovereigns of England or Portugal,
but constitutes the public deed by which before
witnesses we took possession of the port and
island of Bombay. It is a document of antique
phraseology, and guards against the possibility
of mistake as to who Cooke was, by informing
posterity that Humphrey Cooke's name in the
Spanish and Portuguese language would be Inofre
Cooke. .
Dominion absolutely, i.e., to hold and to have,
does not exist in it, for its first right, the right
of taxation, we mean beyond what the Portu-
guese thought proper, is denied to us. We only
give the
INSTRUMENT OF POSSESSION.
|Possession was accordingly given and delivery made of
the port and island of Bombay, which comprehends in its
territories the villages of Mazagon, Parell, Worlee, &c.,
and the said Governor Humphrey Cooke accepted and
received the same in the name of his Serene Majesty the
Ring of Great Britain, in the manner and form laid down
in the instructions from the Viceroy, Antonio de Mello e
Castro. By all and every declaration, clause, and condi-
\
|BOMBAY MARRIAGE TREATY. 9
tion in the said instructions, which are fully expressed
and declared, he promised (in the name of his Majesty the
King of Great Britain) to abide ; and, saying, assuring,
and promising so to do, he took personally possession of the
said port and island of Bombay, walking thereupon, taking
in his hands earth and stones thereof, entering, and walk-
ing upon its bastions, &c., and performing other like acts,
which, in right, were necessary, without any impediment
or contradiction, quietly and peaceably, that his Majesty
the King of Great Britain might have, possess, and be
come master (also his heirs and successors) of the said
island.
And the inhabitants thereof, gentlemen and proprietors
of estates within the circuit and territories of the said
island, who now pay foras to the King our Master, shall
pay the same henceforth to his Majesty the King of
Great Britain. And the same T. M. de Vasconcellos,
S. Alvares Migos, and the Governor Humphrey Cooke,
have ordered this instrument to be drawn up, and
copies thereof given to parties requiring it, and that
the same shall, be registered in the book of the tower
of Goa, and in that of the chamber of the city of
Bassein, and of the factory of the said city, and at
all other suitable places ; and that the necessary
declarations shall be recorded in those books, that at
all times may appear the manner in which this
possession was given and delivery made. And as they
thus ordered this public instrument to be prepared, they,
the said L. Mendes de Vasconcellos, &c. &c., have put
their names thereto in testimony of their having made
the Said delivery, and the Governor Humphrey Cooke,
2
10 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
his, in testimony of his having accepted possession, &c.,
&c.—(Signed) ANTONIO MonTIERA DE FONCECA,
Notary Public of the city of Bassein, &c.”
The Secret Treaty was of course an article of
the Marriage Treaty. It is thus described by
Bruce, in his Annals of the East India Company,
vol. ii., page 105: “By the secret article of this
treaty the King of England obliged himself to
guarantee to the King of Portugal the posses-
sions of that crown in the East Indies; and to
mediate a peace between Portugal and the States
General, with the object that the respective
possessions of the two nations in that quarter
might be ascertained, and then explained that
should the States General refuse to accept of such
mediations, the King would employ his forces and
fleets to compel the States General to accede to
these conditions and to obtain restitution to the
Crown of Portugal of Such Portuguese settlements
in the East Indies as the Dutch might subsequent
to this treaty become possessed of.” The italics
2,I'C OUll'S.
Our readers from this will see that if we have
occasion to deal hardly with the Portuguese in
“A Proceedings of the Bombay Geographical Society, Report on
the Landed Tenures of Bombay, by T. Warden, 1930,-Communi-
catcd by Major T. B. Jervis. &
BOMBAY MARRIAGE TREATY. II
the seventeenth century, the English Govern-
ment of the same period is not a whit behind
them in this; that they knew the right and did
the wrong. When we came in 1662 to take over
this precious dowery the Portuguese would not
give it to us. . We expected the islands, but they
held on to them like grim death; we asked for
Colaba, but it was then an island, and we dare
not touch it. Salsette, Trombay, Caranja, Ele-
phanta, Butcher, and Hog Islands were all in the
same category. We all know that in conse-
quence of this obstinacy 400 Englishmen were
left to rot on the barren isle of Amgediva. This
was the first price, the original purchase-money
of Bombay. It was a ghastly infeftment. The
island of Bombay was really then of very little
value, and an idea may be formed of its resources
from the fact that we had a difficulty in raising
at first an annual revenue out of it of £2,800,
and so late as 1728 we let the whole of Malabar
Hill on lease (to a cow-feeder we presume) at a
rental of Rs. 130, and the island of Colaba at a
proportionate amount. It was the harbour that
attracted our attention, and the vain attempts we
made in Cromwell’s time to get possession of
it show that there were men even then, with no
Suez Canal looming in the distance, who foresaw
12 EOOR OF BOMBAY.
that Bombay, from its geographical position,
was destined to become the key of India. What
is now the city must have been a very poor
place when the Portuguese came to it in 1532,
for our Chief Justice, Sir Michael Westropp,
tells us” that it is not even mentioned in
the Treaty of Bassein, made that year in
favour of the Portuguese, and Dr. Da Cunha
tells us there was only one native village, that
of Kalpadavee, on the island. We presume he
excepts Walkeshwur which must have had a
gathering of holy men round it for centuries and
accommodation for many pilgrims who came
to it from the Malabar Coast.
The head-quarters of the Portuguese in the
Konkan was at Bassein. It was there the General
of the North resided and not in Bombay, where
we will suppose there was little room for colo-
nial enterprise or few incitements to it. Be
that as it may, the dominion of the Portuguese
over Bombay, when we came to it, had lasted
one hundred and thirty years, a period ample
enough to see what stuff they were made of.
The world knows that it was not a good dominion.
* 24th June, 1875.
f At Asiatic Society, July 1881.
BOMBAY MARRIAGE TREATY. 13
It produced nothing and has left us nothing,
except a portion of that wreck of humanity that
still lies stranded on the shores of Western
India. So far as Bombay is concerned there
is nothing to show that the Portuguese, armed
as they were with all the rights that sovereignty
implies, were here. Neither road, nor bridge,
nor aqueduct, nor tank.” The vestiges of
their dominion have passed away as completely
as did those of the Vandals in Africa. What we
fell heir to by the Treaty of 1661, when Cooke
took over the island in 1665 on his own respon-
sibility, and with all the hampering conditions
which we afterwards repudiated, we will en-
deavour to show. Here is the inventory from
authentic sources of what we actually received
with the island of Bombay — d
1. A four square house, some part of the
walls of which may still exist in the arsenal, and
which afterwards became our Government House.
2. The garden which surrounded it, verdant
with slippered pantaloons, fardingales of frowsy
women from Europe, and the Sarries of “ the
pampered jades of Asia.” 3. Four brass guns.
4. A few houses, interspersed among palm trees,
* We must except part of the gateway and a portion of the
lower part of the adjoining wall at the arsenal.
14 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
cujaned (i.e., roofed with the leaves of the palmyra
palm) where the Fort now is. 5. A popula-
tion of 10,000, mostly fugitives and vagabonds.
6. Renegade Jesuits who fomented rebellion
and endangered our lives. 7. A new chapter
in the physical history of man, consequent on the
rulers “levelling” down and not levelling up. 8.
Half a dozen ricketty forts, such as we see to-
day the remains of on Tanna creek. They
crowned the knolls of Mahim, Reeva, Worlee,
Sion, Sewree, and Mazagon. 9. A colonial
Government from Europe, but without the law,
the police, or the education of Europe. 10.
40,000 acres of the best land partially submerged
by the sea, and growing nothing but sampbire.*
ll. A few fishermen’s huts on Dongaree Hill,
and the villages of Parell, Mahim, Worlee, and
Nazagon. 12. The ruins of an old stone cause-
way between Parell and Sion, a veritable “ Bridge
of Sighs,” built as the annalist hath it “ out of
penances.” 13. A climate three-fourths of the
:k Halfway downe,
Hangs one that gathers samphire; dreadful trade.
- - Shakespeare.
The samphire of Fryer and the flats, as also that of Suakim on
the Red Sea, which is turned to profitable account, must be a
different species from Shakespeare's samphire, which is saxi-
frageous, fleshy in the leaf, and makes an admirable pickle. It
is still found on some of the most precipitous rocks on the Sea
coast of Scotland.
BOMBAY MARRIAGE TREATY. 15
virulence of which was owing to the inability of
the settlers themselves to comprehend the first
principles of sanitary science; a climate which
literally devoured every man and woman from
England, and sacrificed some of the noblest
lives that ever came to Western India. 14. A
huge quantity of fish and fishbones. “They
gathered them together in heaps and the land
stank.” This expressive sentence is taken from
the unrevised Old Testament, and describes the
condition of the Land of Egypt after the great
plague of frogs. Such was the Bombay portion
of the dowery of Catherine of Braganza.
Having now taken the gilt off the bridescake
we fear that few of our readers will be able to re-
cognise in this picture what Bombay has since
become, the brightest jewek in the diadem of the
Empress of India.
It was in 1675 that Dr. Fryer, a member of
the Royal Society, suggested that out of all this
scum there might arise another Carthage. He
was a far-seeing man, for among the long bead-
roll of illustrious names on the page of Bombay
history, or books of travels, not one among them
all ventures to forecast the greatness of the city
16 BOOK OF BOM BAY.
or even hazard a conjecture thereon. Xavier,”
Heber, Wilson 2
I do not ask to see
The distant scene, one step enough for me.
And it was ever thus. Not Aungier, not Welles-
ley, not Elphinstone, nor the eagle eye of
Mackintosh which scans the destiny of nations,
vouchsafes a single glance to revive the flagging
courage of the plodding servant of Government,
or animate the hopes of the merchant or the
missionary, who had cast his lot on the dreary
shores of old Bombaim. To him Bombay is
“ the most obscure corner of India.”
But from first to last it was all the same ; we
sowed the seed and awaited patiently the harvest.
In spite of the blundering and villainy of Cooke,
the rebellion of Keigwin, and a climate that
mowed us down before the reaper’s sickle, we
held our ground by sending out fresh men to
repair disaster. In the dullest and most dis-
* Xavier sailed three times from Goa, via Chaul to Bassein,
once in 1544 and twice in 1548. Most likely he sailed up our har-
bour and Tanna Creek ; but whichever way he came and went,
this route or by the open sea, he was bound to see Malabar Hill
and Colaba Point, by whatever names they went in his day. If
he saw anything of Mombai, it could only be a stick and red
flag on some peer’s tomb fluttering in the breeze—
Where shepherds once were housed in homely sheds,
Now towers within the clouds advance their heads,
They viewed the ground of Rome's litigious hall,
Once oxen low’d where now the lawyers bawl.—Virgil.
JBOMBAY MARRIAGE TREATY. 17
couraging of times there was always some
advance. Sometimes floundering but never de-
spairing, our powers of endurance and adminis-
trative ability were tested to the very utmost.
The work, however, killed seven Governors in
one generation—we mean in thirty years. We
may also tack on to this, one ambassador and one
admiral. These were the days of darkness, when
men’s hearts failed them for fear, and when the
tumults of the people were like the noise of the
sea and the waves roaring. It was then we saw
the sun set behind the Dutch fleet, which blocked
up the view seawards and hung like a black
thunder-cloud at the mouth of Back Bay. It
was then that the Great Moghul, or the Seedee for
him, was battering at the gates of Bombay
Castle. Though the Dutch and the Moghul are
now of little account, they were then about the
strongest powers respectively in Europe and in
Asia. The Dutch in the generation we speak of
were the terror of the seas, had burned Sheerness
and entered the Medway and the Thames ; and
Aurungzebe had insulted the majesty of England
by tying the hands of our envoys behind their
backs and sending the Governor of Bombay
about his business.
But we survived it all. There was a provi-
|
3
18 | BOOK OF BOMBAY,
dence that watched over the infancy of Bombay,
and well did she stand her baptism of fire. By
and bye the great Augean stable was partially
cleaned out and the Bombay climate became
tolerable. Either good or bad, strong or weak as
the party is that useth it; like the sword of Scan-
derbeg. She chased the pirates from the sea and
the Pindarees from the land.* By opening up
roads Bombay unlocked the granaries of West-
ern India for her starving children, and by
clearing the sea of desperadoes the Indian
Ocean became the property of all the nations
of the world. She did not wait for the
trumpet blast of the Anti-Corn Law League,
but quietly on her own account inaugu-
rated Free Trade in 1812 during the Baroda
Famine.f " .
In terms of her first proclamation she became an
asylum for all: many men came from the West
with the seeds of religion and civilisation, the
* The last of the Pindarees was killed, near Asserghur, 1819.
Chetoo was wandering about in the neighbourhood seeking rest,
and finding none. Determined, if possible, during the negotia-
tions with Jeshwunt Rao, to destroy this last and most deter-
mined of the Pindarees, Malcolm sent out eight or nine
detachments in pursuit of him. Flying from one, the wretched
man well nigh fell into the hands of another ; and at last, driven
to the jungles, was attacked by a more remorseless, enemy than
the British. We found his horse and his Sword, his bones and
his bloody garments. A tiger had fallen upon and devoured the
last of the Pindarees.—Sir John Kaye's Life of Malcolm, 1856.
, f Basil Hall's Fragments,
BOMBAY MARRIAGE TREATY. 19
blessings of which are now apparent. They
were welcome. Not one of them was injured.
During the long period we have held this island
—and it is a blessed fact to be able to record—
no man has suffered death for his religion, So
perfect was the security of life and property that
many of the settlers slept with open doors and
windows”. At length walls were found to be
no longer necessary. They were a hundred years
in building, and were demolished not by the
hands of an enemy, for no enemy was ever
seen within her gates. The same men (or their
descendants) who erected them levelled them
to the earth, and let him that rebuildeth
them beware of the curse of Hiel the Bethelite.
Little by little, as from the slime and miasma
of some geologic era, an island city rose slowly
from the bosom of the sea, fair to look upon,
green with the verdure of an eternal summer,
beautiful as Tyre and more populous than either
ancient Carthage or Alexandria—crowned not
only with the monuments of human industry,
but with buildings to teach men the art of being
industrious ; with a Government India had never
* Many had mistaken views of India, and thought it was not a
safe land to travel or reside in. He could tell them from a long
life of experience that life and property were more secure than in
England. (Laughter and applause.)—Lord Magdala after Dim-
22er, 10th, July, 1876. -
20 BOOK OF BOM BAY.
known before, that protects the weak from the
oppression of the strong, and measures out equal
law to every one irrespective of his colour or
his creed.
Clear innocence her shield ; her breastplate prayers,
Armour of trustier proof than aught the Warrior wears,
WESTERN INDIA IN 1583,
23
CHAPTER II.
WESTERN INDIA IN 1583.
It requires no very intimate acquaintance with contemporary
foreign opinion to recognize the abiding truth of De Tocqueville's
remark that the conquest and government of India are really the
achievements which give England her place in the opinion of the
world.—Sir Henry Sumner Maine, 1872.
For a long time we were a very weakly power
in Western India, and our Bombay dominion for
a hundred years was limited to such an extent
that a good pedestrian in a single day might
even walk over it. As for Surat, we were for more
than a century merely tenants-at-will of the Great
Moghul. When we agreed with his Nawab, all
went on well: when we disagreed with him, he
put usin iron. But frail and limited as this domi-
mion was, we can now in 1881 aver that we have
held it absolutely for a longer term than any of
the former rulers of Western India. The oldest
24 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
native of Bombay, even by tradition from his
great-grandfather, knows of no other power than
the power of England. It has outlived all the
Soobadars of the Deccan. We have been longer
here than the Peshwas were in Poona or the
Nizams in Hyderabad, and our authority dates
to a time when even the names of Holkar,
Scindia, and Gaekwar were unknown. We forget
the Hubshee of Junjeera, who, strange to say,
with his semi-African genealogy, has outlived the
wreck of nations, and, like Monaco in Europe,
may protest against the Republic. It is true we
are an alien race. But will you point to us in
the history of India a race of sovereigns who were
bound to the soil by community of birth, religion,
and language 2 Who was Timoor the Tartar
and his house, which for generation after gene-
ration from the Peacock Throne lorded it over
India? From Tartary, from Room, from Georgia,
from Khorasan, from regions beyond the Sutlej,
Tartars, Arab mercenaries, and slaves who were
themselves bought and sold, built up crown and
kingdom from Mount Everest to Malacca. Our
vanity is rebuked, however, when we begin to
realize that there was a time when the face of
an Englishman had not been seen on the shores
of Bombay, nor its name on the map of India;
WESTERN INDIA IN 1583. 25
and yet there was such a time. When Shake-
spear was alive, when Elizabeth reigned, when
Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned, when
Knox thundered in St. Giles, when Drake and
Raleigh ventured their ships to compete with
the galleons of Spain into unknown seas, no man
of woman born had yet used English speech
within our island. The first English bungalow
had not been built, for the first Englishmen had
not yet jumped ashore amid huzzas. The first
bargain had not been struck, and consequently
the grave of the first Englishman had not been
dug. The grass on Malabar-hill was a cover for
the hare, and a shelf on the cliff a nest for the
sea-eagle.
We have been led to these reflections by the
perusal of Jean Hugues of Linchotten’s great work
“Histoire de la Navigation.” The author came
out to India in 1583 with the Archbishop of Goa,
and the copy of his book now before us, the third
edition, was published at Amsterdam in 1638. It
is in old French, through which we stumble with
difficulty, and is full of engravings of scenes
and costumes in Western India, taken with
the accuracy and executed with the art which
distinguished the Dutch in those days, for
in these things they were then far ahead
4. t
26 EOOK OF BOMBAY.
of us. It is a large folio in which the author, a Hol-
lander, seems to give an impartial account of the
countries through which he passed, and where
the pictures become doubly valuable, as they
represent the condition of things before the
Englishman had put in an appearance on this
side of India.
The Portuguese, our readers are aware, had
taken possession of our island in 1532, but fifty
years after, when our author was at Goa, it
seems to have been of no account. He gives a
full account of Goa in many pages and half-page
descriptions of Cambay, Ormuz, Diu, Damaun,
Bassein, Chaul, Dabul, and Onore, commercial
emporiums of some note; but Bombay, or Mom-
bai as we may then call it, had not even made
itself so far known that an intelligent European
coming to Goa and describing Western India
should take any notice of it. A stranger on the
bourse at Amsterdam might as well ask for
Oorun or Trombay. That it was an outpost in
which a few Portuguese from Bassein were sta-
tioned, round whom had clustered the cujan
huts of Koli or Dongar, we believe. But no
indication of such a site is given, and as ecclesias-
tical annals and Xavier’s letters are equally silent
WBSTERN INDIA IN 1583. 27
on the subject of even a missionary being sent
to us, we have come to the conclusion that our
infant metropolis had at that time such a small
nucleus, that it was not even worth looking
after, and was nothing in comparison of, say,
Bandora or Mahim, a sufficient rebuke to our
vanity or pride of place, if we have any. There
is ample evidence, we think, that the shrine of
Walkeshwur is of great antiquity, as on our very
first contact with those shores, in 1662, it was a
place of pilgrimage, and had doubtless been re-
sorted to for ages by the natives along the coast.
Of the harbour itself I am reminded that from
remote times it has been a place whence the pro-
ducts of this region found an outlet, and at the
same time an inlet for the produce and handi-
work of other countries, a commerce mani-
pulated by the merchants of Tanna, and pre-
viously by Kallyan, before Bombay comes before
us on the page of history; and though there is
no evidence on the subject, it is highly probable
that for the protection of that commerce a beacon
fire was kept burning on Colaba point at night.*
* “To-day I went to Colaba. On the Southern extremity of
this island stands a light-house, where fire is kept during the
night as a signal to ships which Come into the Bombay har-
bour.”—Dr. Hove, 1787.
28 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
But let us see something of Goa by the help of
Linschotten’s pictures. -
THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.
It was during the time when Akbar reigned in
Delhi, in 1583, that I entered the city of Goa,
which was then in the acme of its glory. The
Portuguese had been here 73 years, and being an
idle man, I was resolved to have a look at it.
The name griffin is not yet invented, so I am
nicknamed reymole. But I do not mind this, and
plunge at once into the heart of the city, feeling
rather hotter than in Antwerp. All the races of
Asia, even the Chinaman, are here bargaining
with, or cheating, or amusing each other. Amid
bags of pepper, bales of silk, and boxes of opium
I take my stand, and see what I have come to
see. The first thing I observe is that the
Portuguese are our masters, and that every
man among them is armed, riding, walking,
sailing, or palanquimborne, and every re-
tainer is armed, down to the veriest chokra.
It seems to me that this does not imply
much security of life or property. It is now
early in the morning, and there is a great
fair every day between 7 and 9, a kind of bourse,
where men from all parts of the world make
WESTERN INDIA IN 1583. 29
their market. The tongues are of Babel, and the
noise deafening. Nobles or Hidalgoes swagger,
with ostrich-feather stuck at one side of their
wide-awakes. Here negro slaves, Arab horses,
and dead men’s effects are sold by auction. Men
die here, even the Viceroy, and if he dies, his bed
is sold from under him at once, and the amount
credited to his executors; the rights of creditors,
widows, and orphans must be respected. I ob-
serve that the Deccany men who have come in
are all sandalled: other natives, except beggars,
wear shoes. We stand for a moment at a mar-
riage procession. The musicians and their native
instruments are familiar to us. And there at her
curtained windows, by the lattice-work appears
in all her glory and debasement Inda meretry.”
saliando et camendo, victim queretans. She hath
cast down many wounded, yea, many strong men
have been slain by her. A Lusitanian swell is
hovering about ; and we are told the reason why
these gentry are so well clothed is that they have
one suit only among three, and that when the lucky
turn comes for one to go on promenade, the
other two go to bed, or rejoice in nether gar-
ments suitable for indoors in hot climates.
Equestrians are numerous, and the horses
are gaily caparisoned in kincob and velvet.
30 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
The harness, saddle, and horse-cloth are fringed
with small bells, which make a mighty jingling
and savour of Lyons or Paris. The inevitable
man with the whisk follows suit. To see the
ladies I have to go to church and stand an
amazing amount of incense. One now emerges
from her closed palanquin like a bride from her
curtained couch. She has downcast eyes, and
her hair brushed back from her forehead & la
mode. A rosary is in her hand, and a jewelled
crosslet on her bosom. A maid stands ex-
pectant with a book, another with a fan, a
third with a cushion, and a fourth with a Per-
sian carpet rolled up. She alights, steadies
herself on terra firma, for there is a mystery
about her feet, which is only explained by
cork pattens six inches high, on which she
has to move gingerly enough. Two cavalieri ser-
venti, one on each side, support this angel of the
church to her seat. The locomotion up the aisle
takes her ten minutes.” I find that this is a
terrible country for jealousy, and that the ladies,
married or single, are guarded by a gang of
slaves. I call at the house of a rich Portuguese
* What appeared to be wooden boxes, where the feet of the
ladies ought to be, were a perfect enigma to me. The explana-
tion, however, is given by Mr. Fonseca in his City of Goat.
wpsTERN INDIA IN 1583, 31
and as soon as my name is announced I hear a
clapping of hands, and I know that this is a sign
in Turkey for the women to fly to the dim re-
cesses of the harem. When a man comes into
your bungalow, offer him at once a seat as good
as you have yourself, hear what he has got to
say, and bow him politely out. If a man comes
into church, rise and salute him at once. Other-
wise, if you do not attend to these maxims, you
may, when out unwittingly on a stroll, get a
bamboo on your back, or have a fillet filled with
sand swung mercilessly on your head by some
ruffian hired for the purpose.
The gentlemen wear peaked beards and
moustachios turned up at the ends. The
ladies float along en boddice on ornament-
ed open palanquins ; and over the head, half
seen, rises an Elizabethan canopy (this is the
age of Elizabeth), the green folds of which
fall gracefully, supported on each side by
a tassel as much for ornament as for use. The
palanquin here is not a wooden box, nor a tonjon,
but exhibits the harmony of form to perfection,
and the bearers themselves are Portuguese,
nearly as well clothed, to all appearance, as their
masters. Ladies, indoors, wear shoes without
stockings. Nunneries have not yet been estab-
32 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
lished. There will be plenty of them by-and-
bye.
The entourage of the European bungalows dif-
fers little from our own. A native climbing a
toddy-tree with knife in his waistband, a woman
drawing water, a parrot in a cage, and a pet
monkey hanging on to the verandah by its hind
legs, with a church in the distance, constitute an
amusing and suggestive picture.
EING OF BALLAGAT.
I hear the sound of horns: there is a sudden
rush of the crowd, and aloft in awful state borne
upon a palanquin comes an ambassador from one
of the Deccany kings. I know these sturdy
bearers from beyond the mountains, as they pass
into the city at a swinging trot, and now near
the end of their journey, take their “canter up
the avenue * or a last spurt as they breast the
hill. A sombrero-wallah has enough to do to
keep the sun from the dusky countenance of His
Excellency, who stolidly contemplates the strange
manners and costumes of the Feringhi which they
have brought in their caravels, across the kala-
panee from the other side of the world. His re-
tainers are armed with bow and arrow, with
spear and javelin, and shield of rhinoceros-hide
WESTERN INDIA IN 1583. 33
from Africa; dusty and wayworn from some far
off city in the Deccan—Beder, or Bejapore, or
Golconda and its diamonds. Bejapore was now
in all its glory, its citadel a crown of joy and
rejoicing to it, and the architect of the big dome
of Mahmood Shah busy at his work.” He
frowns with contempt upon the Lusitanian and
his works of Sheitan. Even his ships, are they
not the works of the devil? A land of monks
and monasteries, where their men are women,
and their women children. Kaffirs every one of
them.
THE MASTER-MARINER.
Before the Portuguese conquered the land here,
they had to conquer the sea on the way to it.
Hence these were the great days for the Master-
Mariner. To be the captain of a ship was next
door to being a prince. To round the Cape of
Storms, to wrestle with the spirit of the storm
like Da Gama in the Lusiad, to wield dominion
of the seas like Cabral, was to be a king of men
and crowned with acclaim by your fellows. Your
name was written in letters of gold and colours
* The biggest dome in the world.—Pantheon, diameter 142 feet,
height 143 feet; Duomo Florençe, diameter 139 feet, height
310 feet; St. Peter's, diameter 139 feet, height 330 feet ; St. Sophia,
diameter 115 feet, height 201 feet; St. Paul's, diameter 112 feet,
height 215 feet; Bejapore, diameter 124 feet, height 198 feet.
5
34 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
on the portals of the Viceroy’s Palace, where the
wondering stranger beholds with awe and pride
the name of every ship and the date of its depar-
ture from Lisbon, with the date of its arrival, the
New Jerusalem of the storm-tost sailor.” Hence-
forth your ship was among the immortals more
famous than any one in the long catalogue of
Homer’s fleet. High over the rest shome the
mighty name of Albuquerque, date 1510, for
though he was not primus in Indis, no
man until his time had ever heard the flap-
ping of European sails in the waters of Goa, for
“He was the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea. "
that lies beside the island of the thousand-and-
one palm-trees. |
DECLINE AND FALL.
It is interesting to note that the causes which
un-made Goa and made Bombay are apparent at
a very early stage of their existence, It would
be unfair to contrast the colonial policy of Port-
ugal in 1580 with that of any European nation
in 1680, but we are fairly entitled to place it side
by side with the attitude assumed by our own
first settlers towards the surrounding peoples in
* Vessels were then few and far between.
westERN INDIA IN 1583. 35
pº
Western India, after making allowance for such
progress as had been made in the century be-
tween 1580 and 1680 in the art of colonisation
and the doctrine of toleration. Goa and Bombay
are islands of about the same size; they both
have magnificent harbours. Upon the one the
Portuguese sat down to exploit, and on the other
the British. But the Portuguese were first in
the race, they were stronger than we, by virtue
of military conquest, and they had a wider area
on which to exploit. The Colonial Empire of
Portugal in the sixteenth century was a great em-
pire, quite as great to the then known world as
the Colonial Empire of England is in the nine-
teenth century. Their enemies were fewer in
number, and less formidable by sea and land.
They had the Dutch to oppose them. So had
we. And what were the Mahomedan kings who
had then established themselves in the Deccan
compared to the daring of Seevajee or the might
of Aurungzebe 2
When we sat down to our work of government,
the same difficulties that confronted them con-
fronted us. There was a community made up of
the same materials, a number of people drawn
together of the different races, languages, and
36 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
religions of Asia. Taking our stand, we appear
both going to the same destimation; but the point
is a kind of reversing station, for though we set off
together, the means which each takes to accom-
plish his government drives us in different direc-
tions. We both mean to govern, and we both do
it in a different way. The evil that was bound
up in the existence of the Portugal of these days
was Church and State, not the one without the
other, but the one with the other. If you accept
my jurisdiction, you must accept my religious
belief.
Hence pagodas, tanks, mosques, synagogues,
and a whole jungle of unbeliefs from their point
of view were cleared out of the cities of Western
India, which presented the appearance of a com-
pact form of Christianized communities with
one aim and serving one master; but it was
merely in appearance. The device was a hollow
sham and makebelief, as every traveller who visit-
ed these cities in the I6th century testifies.
Their own Camoens says: —“This land is the
mother of great villains, and the stepmother of
honourable men.” The outer framework and
policy of it was a sham. Human nature will
not stand this sort of thing ; so one day a priest
is shot outside of Bassein, another day a monk
f
westERN INDIA IN 1583. 37
is poisoned in a buggalow, and on a third news
comes that four missionaries are massacred at
Cuncolim. They are claimed as martyrs by the
church, but they are martyrs to the stupidity
and misgovernment of mankind.
We have touched in the previous chapter on
the policy which was inaugurated by the English
founders of Bombay, that all religions should have
fair play. A later chapter will show how Aungier
dealt with the Banias, and that he induced them
to settle here by allowing them their religious rites,
marriage processions, and burning of their dead.
It was only after our occupation that the first
Tower of Silence was erected on Malabar-hill 5
synagogue, mosque, and fire-temple, all make
their appearance afterwards. We began by pro-
claiming Bombay an asylum for all, and this
was the corollary. The silk weavers came in a
body from Chaul, and we had to build houses for
them. Then came the Parsees, who could build
their own houses, and ships as well, one of
which fought at the battle of Navarino, and on
board another was written “ The Star-spangled
Banner.” But whether it was the Banias
of Diu or the Bhatias of Cutch, all were
welcome. We hailed also the Jews from the
river of Babylon. And this is the reason why
38 |BOOK OF BOMBAY,
Bombay now contains 777,000 inhabitants, and
is not, like Goa, a huge grassy tomb. We were
not, and it is as well to remember this, Societa
propaganda Fide, but the United Company of
Merchants of England trading in the East Indies.
We need not, however, lay the flattering
unction to our souls that we brought this doctrine
of toleration to Asia. We found it here when
we came, and wisdom will not die with us. For
centuries, aye to the most remote times, there
had been a most extensive commercial intercourse
carried on by various nationalities along the sea
board of Western India, so it had become pretty
generally understood that if you wished to trade
with a man, it was not necessary to knock him
down, if he differed from you in religious belief.
So the question had been very much solved in the
maritime towns. For example, Seymour was
very near Bombay. The site of it is still dis-
puted. There were 10,000 Muslims in it.* The
Hindus could not have been very intolerant here.
Them at one time there were seem in the harbour
of Ormuz 400 Chinese junks.f. There must have
been toleration there for the disciples of Confucius.
Seevajee neither burned mosque nor pagoda,and
* Aboulfeda par Reinaud.
+ W. S. Lindsay's Merchant Shipping, 1875.
westERN INDIA IN 1583. 39
allowed dissent in his army, for there were many
Muslims in it, and they had their own butcher.”
And when Aungier took in hand the mon-
grel community of 10,000 vagabonds who swarm-
ed round the Castle of Bombay, he found the
punchayet ready to his handf,-an institution
native to India, which gave to every caste
the elements of self-government, or, as Elphin-
stone ingeniously hath it, gave to the people
justice when they could not get it elsewhere.
THE INQUISITION.
We learn from Mr. Fonseca's History of Goa
that the horrors of the Inquisition have been
much overrated. It is pleasing to think that it
was a mild and beneficent institution, and that
the dreams of childhood from Foxe's Book of
Martyrs and Willie Lithgow's travels: are a
delusion. We may now die happy, so far as the
Inquisition is concerned. It was a great enemy of
rich men, for their property was confiscated. But
for a poor man Why, he had a cell of his own,
and, if an European, bread and meat to his dinner
twice a week, with a bed and coverlet to protect him
from the night dews. Not that the place was open
* Fryer.
t Bruce's Annals.
! In Spain, but nearly of the same date as Linschotten.
40 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
—only the cells had windows and doors. There
was a great air of peace and tranquillity about
the place, which arose from the fact that the
warders in the galleries, who saw everything,
would allow no noise. And they were right, for
noise and tranquillity are strange bed-fellows. It
must have been something of this kind that fas-
cinated Ralph Fitch, an English merchant, who
at Ormuz was kindly offered a free passage to
Goa to explain matters, and is now here in free
quarters in this year of grace 1583. If we re-
member rightly, he—like Baron Trenck else-
where—found the place so comfortable, he wouldn’t
come out. “If I only once got to England, how
happy should I be to come out again. Oh, gentle-
men of England who live at home at ease, you
little know the comforts of the Inquisition.”
I read further that the ailments of the inmates
are carefully attended to, that the Inquisitor with
his secretary and interpreter—how considerate l—
comes twice a month specially to inquire about
them. I marvel at the ventilation of the cells.
The doors are kept wide open to every breeze
that blows every morning from 6 to 11. Sanita-
tion is a perfect model. The etceteras are cleared
out once in four days. Remember this is 1583.
The eating hours are far in advance of any other
WESTERN INDIA IN 1583. 4]
town in India. Breakfast at 6 a.m., dinner at
11 a.m., and supper at 4 p.m. No wonder people
who have been in the civil jails prefer the inqui-
sition. Then autos da fé are not numerous ;
sometimes one did not occur for several years.
Besides, there was no reason for your being
burned alive. The alternative was always open
to you, to confess Christianity, in which case
you were only strangled, justifying the old saw,
“confess and be hanged.” The business after-
wards was merely secondary and a matter of form,
perfectly painless, and required no display of
fortitude, for fire or water is all the same to a
dead man; and it did not matter if your shin-
bones, carried by a lot of guys in wooden boxes,
rattled at the tail of processions for a century
to come. I know Dellon tells differently to all
this, but he lived a century later, and I do not
believe Dellon in many things.
To speak seriously. At the trial there was no
exhibition of the rude instruments and coarse
enginery of persecution to harrow the poor soul.
Some fools in Scotland in the seventeenth century
tried this, but it only turned out, to use their own
language, “an indulgence to tender consciences.”
You remember Old Mortality and the never-to-
be-forgotten scene when Hugh Macbriar, alias
6
42 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Mackail, stood before the judges in the High
Court of Commission. A crimson curtain was
withdrawn and revealed the grim manipulator at
an oaken table, laid out with the horrible appara-
tus of torture, rack, boots, and thumbscrew, and
that, as Sir Walter tells us, though a touch of
nature brought the blood to Macbriar's cheek, he
gazed at the apparition with composure. So
clumsy were these old workmen, Lauderdale and
Mackenzie, in dealing with heretics. They had
not learned their lessons at this school. Here
we act differently. We draw aside a green
taffeta curtain and reveal—the cross. It leans
against the tapestry on the walls, looms big,
and stretches away up to the groined roof.”
It is a black cross. Yes, under this holy emblem
the work is done. The High Court of Commis-
sion and the Inquisition are nearly convertible
terms. But Portugal or Scotland, it is all the
same, no matter under what sky the deed is done;
the palm-tree groweth here, and “ the broom
with its tassels on the lea” yonder, but it does
not alter the eternal nature of things. Soon or
* According to a tradition current among the inhabitants of
Goa, every individual charged with witchcraft or any offence
against the Catholic religion was placed before the crucifix, when
all of a sudden a thrill appeared to pass through his whole frame.
He trembled from head to foot, and at last dropped senseless on
the ground, incapable of fixing his eyes on it anymore.-Fonseca's
City of God, 1878.
WESTERN INDIA IN 1583. 43
syne the end of these things is death—death not
only to the victim, but death to the political system
which first caught him, them incarcerated him, now
tries him, and will burn him. No Government,
be it Catholic or Protestant, be it Muslim or
Brahmin, can engage in this warfare with impunity.
To rid herself of it was the salvation of Scotland,
to continue in it was the doom of Portugal.
On the yesterday of 1583 Portugal was a first-
class power, and might have stood against the
World; now none so poor as do her reverence.
MISCELLANEA.
Linschotten tells us that the non-Christian in-
habitants of Goa had to leave the town every
evening at Sound of tattoo, and dare not practise
their superstitions diaboliques under pain of death.
He argues bad consequences to the country that
every man serving under Lisbon, from the Viceroy
downwards, has a tenure of only three years of
office, and hastens to make the most of it.
The Goojuratis and Banians are the most sub-
tile merchants in the whole of India. The climate
and coast thirty miles north and south of Chaul
(which embraces Bombay) are more salubrious
than elsewhere. He states that the labourers
and peasants who have made profession of Christ-
ianity are little better than the pagans, and
44 IBOOK OF BOMBAY,
that they practise pagan rites by commivance of
the Inquisitors.
In 1583 concubinage and bastardy had already
done their work, for the offspring of Portuguese
fathers and native mothers are named mestici,
and that of Indian fathers and Portuguese
mothers castici.
On the cultivation and trade in opium he states
that while much of it comes from Aden and the
Red Sea, the greater part comes from Cambaia
and the Deccan, meaning no doubt from the
Malwa districts through the Deccan.* He
is silent, as far as we can gather, on its export to
China, or of its being used by the Chinese.
The following sentence, written in 1583, may
have significance for Scotsmen on the eve of St.
Andrew’s Day, for we have seen the antiquity
of tartan gravely disputed. Describing some
cloths he says they are “bigarrez et semblable
aux draps d’Ecosse;” so the Tartan beats them
yet, and we shout Doch in Dorus !
ARCHAEOLOGICAL NOTE ON LINSCHOTTEN.
The binding and about 100 pages of letter-press,
with the engravings, are in good preservation, but
our “mortual enemies,” the white-ants, have made
fearful havoc of the Cartes Geographiques at the
* Duarte Barbosa, 1501-17 gives Opium as one of the products
of India.
WESTERN INDIA IN 1583. 45
end of the volume. The book boards at first sight
lookin capital order, but a narrower inspection dis-
closes the fact that in the end one, two dozen holes
have been bored, as if with a gimlet, through the
bookboard, which is one-eighth of an inchin thick-
ness. Once through this outer work, they have
literally run riot, and round holes deftly cut out,
the size of a sixpence, are perforated through the
maps and a hundred pages of letter-press. The
incisioni, if there is such a word, have apparently
burrowed and littered here for a century ;* their
final achievement being a chasm about two inches
in diameter and half an inch deep. In a print
about two feet long, representing a morning
scene of the Goa Crawford Market of these days,
they have spared neither age nor sex, and per-
formed decapitations on hidalgos and their wives
which would have astonished the Inquisition. So
fragile and tindery was this portion of the work,
that we dare not touch it. But the advent of
the chief of the Archaeological Department, Dr.
Burgess, who is much accustomed to deal with
ruins in their last stage of decomposition, relieved
us of this responsibility, and he boldly disin-
tegrated the shattered sheets which had been so
riddled by the shot of the enemy. When the
great map was spread out by the Indian anti-
* Since this was written we learn that the mischief was all
done in six months.
46 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
quary, it looked like the flag of Drumclog, or let
us say, as it is the work of a Hollander, like the
English ensigns taken by Van Tromp, which are
hung up in Rotterdam Cathedral. Our zeal was
rewarded. There on the faded and battered sur-
face lay the name of our dear old Bombaim, not
itself dim or tarnished, but strong in the vigour
of perpetual youth, her castellated battlements
looking out on the Arabian Sea. With half the
kingdom of Bisnagar eaten up, this was some-
thing to be thankful for. There is no confirma-
tion here of the Portuguese name of Buon-Bahia
ever having been given to our city. The date
is 1594 on the margin of this map, which
describes the geographical knowledge of 1583,
and is the earliest record of the city we are aware
of. The towns along this coast are Damaom,
Danixno, Bacaim, Maim, Bombaim, Chaul,
Danda, Quelecim, Dabul, R. de Vitere, Zanguizara,
Debetele, Cintapore, which we leave our readers
to identify. Broach and Cambaia are north of
Delhi, but it does not matter.
In the pictures we may add that while there
2.Te many Europeans and Natives consuming strong
drinks, there is not a single trace of tobacco or
other smoking indulgencies, confirmation, if any
were needed, that Raleigh’s discovery came after-
wards, and found its way from America.
BOMBAY BEGINNINGS:
49
CHAPTER III.
BOMBAY BEGINNINGS.
THERE was one man in Bombay in 1674 who
read the account of the barbaric splendour of
Seevajee's coronation, and had time to turn a phi-
losophic eye on the infant colony—“The people
who live here are a mixture of most of the neigh-
bouring countries most of them fugitives and
vagabonds”—And then he adds, as with the
blast of a prophetic trumpet—“ licensed out of
policy as the old Numidians to build up the
greatest empire in the world.” Who knew what
would become of Bombay ? Where are now the
rich towns of Dacca, Malacca, or Macao It is
true that it was given to us, and that no man can
cast in our teeth that we took this part of India.
But everything was against it, and when we got
it, it was not worth the having. Charles II. soon
* Fryer.
7
50 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
found out that it was a white elephant and handed
it over to the East India Company, in free and
common soccage at ten pounds per annum in
gold. From the 8th January, 1665, when Hum-
phrey Cooke took “ the earth and stones '' of
Bombay, from Fonseca, Notary Public of Bas-
sein, by public document, and for the next thirty
years, it was surrounded by a blazing conflagra-
tion, the whole neighbouring continent being in
a ferment. How it came out of its troubles is a
perfect mystery. Our readers will recollect that
its rise was contemporaneous with that of Seewajee,
and that he held every stronghold on the coast
for four degrees of latitude except Goa, Junjeera,
Chaul, and Bombay. Then there was the Moghul
of Delhi with whom we were often at war, the
Dutch, the French, the Portuguese, and last,
though not least, the Seedee from Junjeera,“ that
damned train the scum of Africa inhabited by
straggling runagates.” There was mutiny, famine,
and pestilence.
The mutineers held Bombay for one year; the
Seedee held Bombay, except the Fort, for one
year, and twice (in 1691 and 1702) the plague
appeared and reduced the English garrison to
seventy-six men. Once the standard of rebellion
was hoisted among the Jesuits of Salsette, Cooke,
BOMBAY BEGINNINGS. 51
the first Governor, becoming the first rebel. Once
the Dutch appeared at the mouth of the harbour,
and Seevajee's fleet once entered Back Bay. Bom-
bay was at the mercy of the Seedee for those great
necessaries, beef, mutton, grain and firewood,
and he could, by a hookum, put the city on fish
diet. Once it depended upon the island of
Kemery for its supply of firewood; with the society
of a very few English ladies, without gas, with-
out firewood, without ice or tramways, with the
certainty of not receiving a reply to their letters
for two years from England, with their houses
glazed with oyster-shells, and the Apollo, or Pulla
Bunder (not our one), nearly impassable with
mud, we need not wonder if during the dark days
of the monsoon the citizens took to drink and divi-
nation. When would a ship arrive with news?
Ah, that was an important question which nec-
romancers (and Time) alone could answer, and
wonderfully correct answers they gave, from the
fate of a Governor down to that of the first spin
who jumped ashore in hoop and farthingale.
Then there was the dread of being poisoned. As
an antidote they drank out of a cup made out of
the horn of a rhinoceros, and wore as a jewel the
marvellous snake-stone to shield them from the
deadly bite of the cobra. Unfortunately, as we
52 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
should say, drink remained. To a people who
had no clocks and who measured time by the
dropping of water, drink was convenient. There
was first beer, and the sack that killed Tom
Coryat on the banks of the Taptee. Then there
was Bombay punch, a mixture of brandy, rose-
water, and lime-juice, “ that accursed Bombay
punch, to the shame, scandal and ruin of reli-
gion;” there was jagree arrack, distilled from
sugar, mixed with water and the bark of the babul
tree as hot as brandy; there was fool rack made
from the blubber or carvel of the sea, and so
called from its making fools of all who drank of
it. Everything came “ready as the handle of a
pintstoup.” In their “gay humours” they quaff-
ed a glass of datura and water, which had hitherto
been only used for the killing of infants in Katty-
war. Bhang and hashish did the rest. After
drinking toddy rapidly, they took a disease called
barbieri or berri berri in which a man tottered in
his gait like a dying sheep or span round like a
teetotum. On fish diet, and amid stinking fish,
in constant alarms and drunken debauches, it
was no wonder that the Angel of Death descend-
ed and the plague held Bombay in its grip, reduc-
ing its English population from 800 to 80. After
* Governor Aungier.
BOMBAY BEGINNINGS. 53
this there was a goodly show of tombstones at
Mendham’s Point, which the sailors caught sight
of on entering Bombay harbour.” Verily “two
monsoons were * more than “the life of man’’ in
those days. *
There was no daily newspaper in Bombay, or
it might have had fine sensation placards:—
“Plague Bulletin.—Only three Civil Servants
now alive, 1692. Angediva. 381 English soldiers
dead out of 500.”
“The Seedeelands at Sewree with 20,000 men.”
“Bartholomew Harris and the whole factory
at Surat put in prison.”
“Vaux, Governor of Bombay, found in traitor-
ous correspondence with the French.”
“Sir John Child, Captain-General and Admiral
of all the forces by sea and land in Northern In-
dia, bones the Building Fund of the Cathedral,
Rs. 50,000.” *
“The brother-in-law of Child, one Ward, tam-
pers with Seevajeetoeffect a landing on the island.”
“Child sends a Banyan to Surat to poison one
of his Council.”
Another Member of Council flies and dies
among the Sanganian pirates. “Dead and gone
to the devil,” wrote Child pathetically.
* This was the first English burying-ground. The tombs were
all demolished. When Sonapore Was Opened in 1760.
54 BOOK OF BOMBAY. .
A man is hanged on Tuesday, and on the follow-
ing Friday the judge summons him to appear ! .
Not at that bar I ween. The judge forgot all
about it, but the Recording Angel doubtless took
a note of it. The hour in which the judge await-
ed that dead man’s appearance must have been the
darkest hour in the history of Bombay. But it is
one consolation to know or believe that when these
wicked men were in power the voice of flattery was
unknown. “He that sayeth to the wicked, thou
art righteous, him shall the people curse, nations
shall abhor him,” so the wretched race, if it ever
existed, of panders and parasites, have been con-
signed to oblivion, while their masters have been
“hung in chains” for the benefit of posterity.
The question may now be asked, why was
Pombay not snuffed out like the settlements of
Angengo, Onore, or Gombroon?% Why does the
traveller not now seek out its ruins like those of
Ormus, Chaul, Goa, or Bassein, overgrown with
* The Bulldog of Qmore.-An English factory subordinate to
Telicherry... In 1670 the chief of the English factory got a fine
English bulldog from the captain of a ship. After the ship was
gone, the factory consisting of eighteen persons, were going a hunt
and garried the bulldog with them, and passing through the town
the dog seized a cow devoted to the pagóda and killed her. Upon
Which the priests raised a mob, who murdered the whole factory.
But some natives who were friends to the English made a large
grave and buried them all in it. The chief of Carwar sent a stone
to be put on the grave with an incription “That this is the
burial-place of John Best with seventeen other Englishmen who
Were SaGrificed to the fury of a mad priesthood and an enraged
mob.”—Hamilton's New Account, 1720,
BGMBAY BEGINNINGS. 55
sacred Banian or religious fig 2 It was clearly
the will of God that Bombay was not to perish,
and to this end, he gave to the men who founded
it noble resolutions mauger many defections
which we have not failed to enumerate. For we
shall observe that amid all this dissolution of
morals, never more conspicuous than in the end
of the seventeenth century, there were among
the English (and we use the word in the generic
sense) who first colonised Bombay, men who
knew the right and did it, men who kept alive
the spirit of just acts, the spirit of forbearance
and toleration, and above all the spirit of liberty
and ancient freedom inherited from their ances-
tors.” We have given a sentence from Aungier.
It is brief, but reveals the noble character of
the man. England gave her best blood in
the foundation of Bombay, for when the sword,
famine, and pestilence had done their work, fresh
supplies were forthcoming, to carry commerce
and civilization into distant regions and to sub-
jugate by their influence the beastly and barbar-
ous habits of swarthy races of men, and to show
by their example that the principle of free in-
quiry and private judgment was a surer title to
-ºr- Eyen the mutineers we have alluded to handed over to the
East India Company the treasure they captured in the Fort to the
last rupee.—Hamilton's East India Gazetteer.
56 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
dominion than the sword of Philip or the Inqui-
sition of Torquemada.
Hence men of every nation, as they still do,
flocked under the standard of Bombay Castle,
and the population rapidly increased from
10,000 to 50,000. Even her enemies did not
hesitate to entrust their lives and property to
her protection. To many people these may
seem wild assertions, but we can give a
reason for the faith that is in us, and here
it is. Khafi Khan, to whom we owe the
best history of these times, was in the service of
Aurungzebe, was a bigoted Muslim, and a hater
of the English. He came on a visit to Bombay
in 1694 after the first great plague. He came
from Surat, where the English Governor had
been put in irons for months by Aurungzebe.
English pirates had just seized the richest pilgrim
ship from Mocha with fifty-two lakhs under cir-
cumstances of horrible barbarity, two events
calculated to produce great exasperation on both
sides. He did not come as a diplomatist, simply
as a merchant carrying piece-goods to the value
of two lakhs to Raighur, that hot-bed of political
discontent. He might have well paused on the
frontier, and the Portuguese advised him against
coming. But he says:—“I, however, put my
BOMBAY BEGINNINGS. 57
trust in God and went to the Englishman.” He
was right : we did not burn either mosque or
pagoda. The Governor of Bombay gave him a
public reception, a kind of Durbar. There were
7,000 soldiers, Native and European, youths and
gray-haired men, and some fair-haired children
with blue caps with pearl and tassel, the men
and women of the next generation. Khafi Khan
was not a coward; on the contrary, he was
decidedly cheeky and told the Governor some
most unpleasant things, true and untrue; told
him he was a rebel for coining money in the
name of his impure King (he could only have
heard of Charles II.), denounced the seizure of
the big ship by Englishmen, and gently reminded
him of the cruel fates of the Kings of Bejapore
and Hyderabad and the ghastly sight at Toolapore,
where the son of Seevajee was executed. The
lesson intended was that what Aurungzebe had
done he might do again. The Governor listened
patiently. It was dignity and impudence, a la
Landseer with dogs converted into human beings.
We give his own words, “ On hearing this the
Governor laughed loudly.” And Mashallah
after a few words in season Khafi Khan was
allowed to depart in peace, with his oxen and his
8
58 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
sackcloth” and his inner man no doubt replenish-
ed with kabob and pilaw. As he walked out of
the fort gate he felt that his head was on his
shoulders. i
The English laughed. Long may they do so.
It was the laugh of conscious strength, of men
made great by hardship. Mere levity to Monk
and Muslim But every reader of these dismal
times will thank God for such noble courage and
right good cheer amid unparalleled disasters, and
re-echo the prayer of Burns appropriate to every
age and every islander— -
“Then, however crowns and coronets be rent,
A virtuous populace may rise the while
And stand a wall of fire around our much-loved isle.”
MORTUARY RETURNS.
Humphrey Cooke, Sir Gervase Lucas, Sir
George Oxenden, Gerald Aungier, Henry Oxen-
den, Sir John Child, and Bartholomew Harris,
are the names of the Governors of Bombay (either
independent or subordinate to Surat) during the
first thirty years of its existence, say from 1665
to about the end of the century.
They all died here or in Surat. Our Admiral,
Sir Edward Shipman, died at Angediva, and our
Ambassador, Sir William Norris, died on his way
* All English cloth then SO called,
BOMBAY BEGINNINGS. 59
home. Vaux, who acted pro tem., was drowned
with his wife in the Tapti. Gray, who was to
have succeeded Aungier, died. Of their immedi-
ate successors, one, Sir John Gayer, was impri-
soned by the Moghul, and another, Sir Nicolas
Waite, was dismissed by the English.
They did not find Bombay an Eldorado, for
the days had evidently not yet arrived when men
amassed fortunes quickly and returned to spend
them in England.
We mention these names to show who were
the men to whom we are indebted for laying the
foundations of Bombay in tempestuous times, and
organising the basis of the polity on which the
government of this Island was afterwards con-
ducted. We say Island,” for our interest in
Western India for ninety years was concentrated
within that sixteen square miles which lies
between Sion Fort and Colaba Point. Among
these giants of early Bombay times, we shall
meet with all varieties and shades of character.
Cooke was a most wretched man. He was not a
pucka Governor. He made himself Governor,
* ACQUISITIONS.—Bombay 1665; Bankote 1756; Salsette, Trom-
bay, Elephanta, Butchers Island, IKaranja, and Hog Island 1775;
Rolaba, Angria's Territory, 1840. -
60 ROOK OF BOM BAY.
and a most cutcha one he was.” He purloined
the revenues, he accepted bribes, he manufac-
tured title-deeds, he became a rebel against the
Government he had sworn to defend, and worst
of all, when poor old Shipman died, leaving
fº,420 after his three years' service, Cooke, who
had been his secretary, charged his widow fifteen
per cent. on the estate. Child, the brother of
the Chairman of the East India Company, while
in Bombay was Governor-General of India, and
while his character has been defamed by his
enemies, it has been lauded by the Company, by
whom he was presented on one occasion with
one thousand guineas. Aungier, without title
or distinction of any kind, scems to us to have
been the greatest of them all. He saved Surat
and Bombay, not only from capture and disgrace,
but from utter destruction. Without Aungier
we are safe in saying that Bombay would have
been lost to the English nation. It would have
fallen a prey to the Seedee or Seevajee, or the
Dutch, or some other nation, European or
Asiatic ; and for the fact that it did not to do
so we have to thank Aungier.
There is something touching in the old man’s
* Cooke's having taken over Bombay, without its dependencios
involved us in fearful trouble for more than a contury.
BOMBAY BEGINNINGS. 6]
request to resign and go home, and them—the
inevitable.
“There is a tomb in Surat,” says Mr. Campbell
in the Gazetteer, “ without an inscription, sup-
posed to be that of Aungier.” He does not need
it. Sº monumentum quaeris circumspice. We
may well pause and drop a tear on the grave of
Aungier— -
“No sculptured marble here, no pompous lay,
No storied urn, nor animated bust,”
for, no martyr, who ever died by stake or faggot,
has a left fairer name or a more unsullied reputa-
tion than Gerald Aungier. Why do we recall
these facts to the memory of the reader Why
do we bring forth forgotton lore from dusty
recesses To keep alive the memories of our
great mem—precious nowhere else, if not in
Bombay.
These were the early Governors, but we must
remember that a Governor then was Commander-
in-Chief, Chief Justice, Port Trust, including
the Fortifications, Chamber of Commerce and
Municipal Corporation all rolled into one. He
was liable to great temptations. This was the
age when the King of England sold his country
to France and French mistresses. If the master
62 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
is not a model of virtue, we need not look for
much in the servant at one of the outposts of
civilization. Some men seem to begrudge them
their very tombstones” as if they had enriched
themselves at the expense of the nation, when,
in truth, it was they who enriched England.
The Americans are wise in their generation, and
do not dive too deeply into Paul Jones, who first
unfurled the flag of their freedom on the Atlantic
Ocean.f Let us follow their example. The men
who built up the fabric of Bombay's greatness
on Rs. 200 per mensemf may well be excused
when they occupied their leisure hours in making
out invoices of pepper and cardamoms, or in
looking over account sales of Golconda diamonds.
At all events the voice of calumny may be
hushed for ever by the verdict, “Died at their
post.” -
EXCHANGE
Is a tough subject, but is easier to deal with
in the past than in the future. We may presume
that hoondies or inland bills were in circulation
* Eastwick in “Murray’s Guide,” Ed. 1857.
f “Our First Century” Devens, Ontario, 1878. -
f £300 per annum at exchange of 2s. 6d. Even making allow-
ange for the difference in the value of money in these times and
º all perquisites, this Sum is a small Salary for such an
O - CC.
BOMBAY BEGINNINGS. 63
in India as bank-notes were in China centuries
before we touched these shores.
“Blest paper credit ! last and best Supply
That lends corruption lighter wings to fly.
Gold imp’d by thee can compass hardest things
Can pocket states, can fetch and carry Kings.”
Tom Coryat in 1616 valued his rupee at 2s. 6d.,
and in 1664 Bernier wrote “a rupee is about
twenty-nine pence.” Gilchrist in his Wade Mecum,
1825: “There have been instances of some firms
declining to offer 2s. 6d. for a Sicca rupee, bills
being payable at six months after sight in
Europe, while others whose stability appeared
equally solid offered 28. 9d. for the same accom-
modation.” Our belief is that there were no
exchange banks in Bombay, until the Oriental
Bank Corporation opened in 1842.
It would thus appear that exchange during the
seventeenth, eighteenth, and first quarter of the
nineteenth centuries ranged from 2s. 6d. to 2s. 9d.
We have seen even 38. mentiomed. It is not,
however, all gold that glitters, and remitters need
not envy those times.
The Sicca rupee, which was the current medium
until 1835, had eight per cent. more silver in it
than the Company’s rupee, and a thirty days’
sight bill in 1694 really meant a bill at thirteen
months’ date. Ships then took twelve months,
64. T3OOK OF BOMBAY.
and, in 1825, four to six months to make the
passage to England. Besides money in Bombay
was then worth twenty per cent.
PROFITS OF TRADE.
Civilians at this time, after paying natives
20 per cent, made large profits, trading with
China and other places. The two following ex-
tracts show what profits were common. They
are from the Company’s Records :—
1675.—Pepper was 7d. per lb. in England, and
here 2%d. They write that unless 30 per cent.
profit can be made “ the Indian trade would
become unproductive.”
Now for diamonds. The period had not yet,
if it ever, arrived, described by Pope, when
e “Asleep and naked as an Indian lay
An honest factor stole a gem away.”
But the demand for diamonds was very large in
Europe at this time. Our readers will recollect
that this was the showy age of Charles II. and
Louis XIV., when worthless Women in a blaze
of diamonds flaunted on the glacé floors of Ver-
sailles and Hampton Court, and when nothing
was esteemed
“More precious than Golconda’s gems
Or star in angel’s diadems.”
The Court write in 1680 : “If the profit on
BOMBAY BEGINNINGs. 65
diamonds sold in England should exceed £60
per cent. (including interest and insurance) such
excess was to be equally divided, one moiety to
belong to the Company, and the other to the
President Agents and Councils by whom the
diamonds had been obtained, in equal propor-
tions, but not to be paid till their return to
England.” Cautious Court |
TEIE COTTON TRADE.
There seems to have been a forecast of a cottom
export. The Company in 1684 sent out the first
cotton screw, but the earliest notice we meet
with in the East India Records is dated 1693,
when instructions are sent to Sir John Gayer
“ always to have in readiness a large quantity
of pepper and cotton-wool, to meet the arrival of
the shipping.”
These are the initial letters of the Bombay
cotton trade, which has grown into an export
of one million bales. It had been an export from
Tanna in Marco Polo’s time.
THE IMPORTS.
In the first years were greatly in timber, iron
and iron work for the fortifications, and cotton
cloths or sack cloth as it was called. Amongst
the earliest imports is beer, which always accom-
9
66 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
panies the Englishman. The story is told that
a wealthy Indian expressed his surprise at the
opening of a bottle of beer. “It is not,” he
said, “ the sight of the drink flying out of the
bottle, but how such liquor could ever be put
in.” We observe that there is no notice of the
now favourite drink in Bombay, whiskey, for the
substantial reason that it was not known in
Scotland until 1745, claret having been the safer
drink of the Caledonian previous to this time.*
Having exhausted our commercial circular we
turn to
FREIGHTS,
and regret that we have only one morsel to com-
municate under this important branch. Mr.
Aungier took the King’s ship, Leopard, down
to the Viceroy of Goa in 1662, and offered her
at the rate of £21 38. 6d. per ton. The Portu-
guese merchants offered £8 per ton. The trans-
action, therefore, was “broken off.” Mr. Aungier
was otherwise a most estimable man, and in an
evil hour had undertaken the duty of being his
* We think that Burns' testimony on this point will be held
all sufficient. In “Tam O’Shanter ’’ it is “ale.” In “Dr. Hor-
book” it is “ale.” In the “Whistle,” or great Bacchanalian con-
test, 1789, at which Burns Was a spectator among the landocracy,
it is Wine.
“To finish the fight turn'd ower in one bumper a bottle of red,
And swore 'twas the Way that their ancestors did.”
BOMBAY BEGINNINGS, 67
own broker, to which may be attributed the
non-success of the negotiations.
x JOVIAL TIMES. *
Dr. Fryer is our great authority on this head.
He was a member of the Royal Society, recently
instituted, and was a Royal Drinker. He says
with an evident relish : “The Dutch at Vingorla
treated us with dancing wenches” and good
soops of brandy and Delf's beer till it was late
enough.” We can still see from his portrait
that Fryer had a “jolly nose,” fruit of imbibing
much liquor. At those long nautches, where
there is so much weariness of the flesh to Euro-
peans, he felt woe-begone. At a Mahomedan
entertainment the sherbet palled upon him, and
he relates with much satisfaction that he obtain-
ed the necessary stimulus from the flask he had
no doubt quite accidentally brought in his pocket.
This exhibits great presence of mind, and when
he reached home, so far as the flask was con-
cerned, or we give him too much credit for his
sobriety, he would no doubt
“Whistle ower the lave o’t.” +
He was asked on a medical mission to the
* Nautches.
# Free translation : Whistle over the leavings of it.
68 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
*.
monks of Bandora—foreign territory—and they
were very kind to him.
“The monks of Melrose made gude kail
On Friday when they fasted.”
So did those, whilom of Bandora ; and Fryer, no
doubt, challenged them in the spirit of the quaint
old ditty :—
“I cannot eat, I’ll have no meat, my stomach
is not good ;
But I do think, that I can drink, with him who
hath a hood.”
He recrossed the frontier in a boat in perfect
safety. The great drinkers of this period were
the Dutch, and, we believe, that when their
“Sweet William ” in 1688 went over at the Re-
volution to govern England, one-half of them in
India got very merry. They are the only nation
except the Scotch who ever carried their drink
into the church-yard, and the Scotch have
dome this very rarely, and then only in their
own country, when a legacy was left to drink to
the “ pious memory '' of the deceased. “In
Surat cemetery there was the 'tomb of a great
Dutch drinker, a relation of the aforesaid Prince
of Orange. At the top was a great cup of stone,
and another at each corner. Opposite each cup
was the figure of a sugar-loaf. Dutch drinking
BOMBAY BEGINNINGs. 69
parties used to frequent this tomb, brewing their
punch in the large stone basins ; remembering
their departed companion they sometimes forgot
themselves.” t
This may be a delusion, as there is no such
thing in the Surat cemetery nowadays. The
Dutch went there for quietness no doubt, and to
carry out the solemn, but absurd, injunctions of
the defunct toper. -
The reader will not thank us, if after bringing
him so far, we do not take a saunter into
BOMBAY GREEN.
But before doing so, we may as well ask him to
take a map of Bombay in 1880, and wipe out
with a brush nineteenth-twentieths of all the
streets and buildings thereon. Clear away the
whole palatial structures on the Esplanade, and
substitute cocoanut forest, such as you see on the
road to Mahim, a stray panther depicted here as
in old maps sprawling over the paper, will lend
an interest to the scene. Knock down Forbes
and Medows Streets, leaving untouched the old
Portuguese country church (now Convent
School) standing alone among coco trees. “Take
away the bauble” fountain that spouteth Water
to the memory of the Duke of Wellington and
* Ovington, 1688,
70 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
place a few English graves near the Cooperage.
Make one conspicuous by rude lettering. This
is the grave of Thomas Mendham, the first Eng-
lishman who died in Bombay. It will look well
under one of the big banian trees. Sprinkle a
few tombs in the earliest style of Sonapore,
evidently copied after Mahomedan originals.
Place here Mendham’s Point, and on the ground
hereabouts “fill in * with old wells, pit falls and
stone heaps, and in lieu of Colaba Causeway re-
open a tidewayº rushing violently into Back Bay
or vice versa, separating you, except by boat,
from the ‘‘ Old Woman’s Island ” which runs
like a spit into the sea and is well stocked with
antelopes and other “ beasts of delight.” Serve
imaginary warrants of ejectment on Rampart and
Hornby Row, and pull the whole blessed mass to
pieces. Have no respect for antiquity. Place a
tank on the site of the old Secretariat, where
Jonathan Duncan died, and a free coup full of
dead dogs and cats on the sea-beach where the
Mint now stands. We fear also that the Town
Hall and St. Andrew’s Kirk with all the build-
. . There is a story told of a French corvette having been enticed
into Back Bay by a Bombay buggalow by the deep water channel
which runs alongside of Malabar Point. The corvette gave ghase
into this Colaba channel, from whence the buggalow escaped into
Bombay harbour, but the corvette is said to have stuck fast in
the mud somewhere near the present position of the Bombay
Tramway stables. {
BOMBAY BEGINNINGS. 71
ings between them will require to go by the
board. People Moody Khana Street on the sea
face with crimps, land-sharks, budmashes, pirates,
and bunder gangs. Demolish all the Parsee and
Hindoo five-storey architecture which came in
with such force after the English occupation.
It is no doubt very picturesque; but never mind.
Don’t even think of the Fort walls of your early
days with their Apollo, Bazaar, and Church
Gates. You will find them fifty years later. Dot
here and there, amid the green mass of jungle,
a few Portuguese-built houses, such as we will
describe farther on, and high above them all
“ paint in ’’ the frowning bastions of Bombay
Castle, mounting 100 guns, and leave a wide
open space covering fifteen acres (in or about the
centre of which now stands Elphinstone Circle)
for the grand old Bombay Green, which for one
hundred and fifty years was the scene of so many
balls, reviews, and theatrical displays to the
generations which have passed away.
This work of demolition will prepare the way
for an imaginary inspection in which we shall see
a little of the internal economy of the place. A
pleasing picture of the Bombay of this period
might be constructed, but we cannot do it. The
dirt and stench are too great ; and over all, an
72 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
overpowering odour of fish and fish-oil. Bumaloes
here, there, everywhere. -
“ All flesh is fish” here with a vengeance.*
You leave Bombay. It’s no use, merely getting
“ out of the pot into the fire,” for Bandora
Mahim and Tanna are fishy, fishier, fishiest, a
region of blue-bottle flies where the land is
manured and the trees also with fish, and
where pomphlet, seer fish, and pulla, take their
place at dinner in one eternal round. The eggs
and milk taste abominably of fish, and the tea as
if a red herring were boiled in it. The Mazagon
mangoes are suspicious. We are sorry to say
this of a fruit that was devoured with relish pro-
bably under the peacock throne of Delhi by Shah
Jehan. Still the people here are not quite so
bad as those in Hydramaut on the opposite coast
of Arabia genuine fishyophagists, who fed their
horses and cattle on fish. On the contrary, they
gave their horses a meal of sheep’s head. We
suppose minus the trotters.f
* Hugh Miller’s “My Schools and Schoolmasters.”
f Another strange thing is that they feed their horses with:
boiled rice and boiled meat.-Marco Polo. Rice is frequently
given by the natives to their horses, and a sheep’s head oc-
casionally to strengthen them.–Note by Dr. Caldwell. The
sheep's head is peculiar to the Deccan. It is told of Sir John
Malcolm that at an English table where he was present, a brother
officer had ventured to speak of the sheep-head custom to an
unbelieving audience. He appealed to Sir John, who only shook
his head deprecatingly. After dinner the unfortunate story-teller
remonstrated, but Sir John’s answer was only “My dear fellow,
they took you for one Munchausen ; they would only have taken
me for another.”—Colonel Yule's Marco Polo.
BOMBAY BEGINNINGS, 73
A town of 20,000 inhabitants, consisting mostly -
of Gentoos (a horrible word, which even Burns
makes use of) with a street about a mile long,
stretching from the Castle to Dungree Fort of
small houses surrounded with gardens. You
may see a representative of this style of Bombay
houses, not now with oyster shells instead of
panes of glass, in Cowasjee Patel Street, still
standing in line with the Cathedral High School
at the back of the Hongkong and Shanghai
Banking Corporation Building. -
The huts in which the servants lived were
thatched with palmyra leaves, but so was the old
Colaba Church until very lately. A curtain
and one or two bastions of the Fort may still
be seen on the way to Bombay Castle. Com-
paratively, and to us, these “auntient ruines”
are quite as interesting as the Tower of David is
to Jerusalem or the old walls to the City of
Chester, and these words may be written on
them
NEVER TAKEN,
which cannot be said of Jerusalem or Chester.
Some of the Seedee's shot lies embeded in the walls.
But let us walk into “the Green,” and first of
all inspect the Cathedral walls. They still stand
10
74, IBOOK OF BOMBAY,
unfinished, fifteen feet high, as they have done
for the last dozen years. Some wicked person
has chalked upon them in large letters, “My
house shall be called a house of prayer’—you
know the rest. It is a feeble inuendo which ex-
plains the ragged and unfinished condition of .
the building. Half-decayed plaster and stones
have always a lowering effect on the spirits, so we
instinctively enter a victualling house, where
some commanders of the East India Company’s
ships have gone before us and are lounging
about. They are very fine men, and their dress
contrasts with the “hodden gray ” of the new-
comer—blue coats, black velvet lappets with gold
embroidery, deep buff waistcoats and breeches,
cocked hat and side arms and gilt buttons. Their
talk is of dogs, bull-dogs, sleuth hounds and gray
dogs. A coursing match was being made up for
Malabar Hill, where the long grass afforded ample
cover for the hare,” but some griffins had run
the greyhounds at midday, and the sun, which
respects neither man nor beast, had destroyed
several of them.f. There is much uproar in this
* On our return from Malabar Hill we started a hare as large
as an European one.—Dr. Hove, 1787.
f Greyhounds and hounds if they chance to hunt with them
about noon, the ambiont air mixing with the natural, when it is
formonted and chafod, Commonly proves too strong for their
constitutions.—Ovington, 1688.
BOMBAY BEGINNINGS. 75
hostelrie and some heavy jokes at which “ the
landlord’s laugh is ready chorus.” But we are
not going to be deprived of our drink, so we call
for what we believe to be the orthodox refresher
of the time,
A SNEAKER OF BOMBAY PUNCH,
and showing at the same time that we are quite
aw fait at the manufacture, we ask for a quart of
the best Goa arrack, half a pound of sugar, and
half a pint of good lime water, and compound
the liquor forthwith. As things go it is a long
drink and a satisfactory drink, and we carry it
discreetly. We may remind you that this is
1694, not l880.
On handing the publican the reckoning, half
a rupee (it does not seem much) one of the
aforesaid commanders snatches the wooden bowl
from our hands and examines it minutely.
And them, as if he had been a Chinaman
taking a great oath, he dashes it in pieces
on the ground. We ask a reason for this
strange conduct, and are informed that an
order of the Bombay Government, dated 13th
August, 1694, has just been promulgated,
76 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
“ that if the clerk of the Market’s seal is
not on any bowle, it may be broken and
payment of the Punch lawfully refused l’’
“ Drink, weary traveller, drink and pay,” so
we hand Boniface a rupee, and doffing our
topi to the naval men make our exit. We
can aver that there is a wall here and a
gate, for we pass the sentries, who are
busily grabbing a fourth fish (You see that
it is still fish) from each basket for the Fort
Adjutant’s lucrative perquisite. We peer out
of the gate and beyond it. The Mahim coco-
palms and toddy trees come right down to
the very walls, a clearance for the Maidan not
having been effected for many years. A pelt-
ing shower, our reader will be glad, drives us
home, and ends the day, so far as our stroll is
concerned.
A HOME IN BOMBAY IN 1694.
At our domicile we close the day by a stroll
on the house top, from which we can observe the
Mody Parsee Tower of Silence, the smoke of
burning bodies, and two or three well known
citizens in wig and breeches taking their three
BOMBAY BEGINNINGS. 77
miles’ walk on the sands of Back Bay. All night
long, varied by the beating of tom-toms and the
unearthly yells of jackals, we hear at intervals
above the eerie sough of the Indian Ocean
and the rustling of dry palm leaves, the
watchmen calling to each other, the night
watches and the morning hours, while from
our charpoy we can descry fires blazing away
on Thull, Caranja, Henery, and Funnel Hill
showing us that the Seedee is abroad. In the
grey of the morning or false dawn, and
long before other people are awake, a sound
comes faintly on the ear, women grinding at
the mill, a sound as old as Ur of the Chaldees,
and the lilt or music which accompanies it may
be older still. The women ply their task, and
the prayer of millions, “uttered or unexpressed,”
continues the same from age to age, “Give
us this day our daily bread.” The day
ends
“So when the sun in bed
Curtain’d in cloudy red
Pillows his chin upon the western wave,”
we bethink ourselves of home, hie to the Dungree
Killa, resign ourselves to sleep, hearing familiar
78 IBOOK OF BOMBAY.
voices from the fatherland, “ low and sweet,”
like the voice of Annie Laurie,
“Perhaps Dundee's wild warbling measures rise
Or plaintive Martyrs worthy of the name,
Or noble Elgin beets the heavenward flame.”
Perhaps.”
* Burn’s “Cottars' Saturday Night.”—This is no wild fancy.
A Scotch minister, Mr. Stirling, was in Bombay, which argues
a following of “ Brither Scots "...in the last quarter of the seven-
teenth century. All Scotsmen did not “ leave their religion at the
Cape,” and those who were then here, were less, likely to do so
as they came from the brunt and fire of the “killing times " of
Charles the Second.
GERALD AUNGIER, GOVERNOR
OF BOMBAY.
8].
CHAPTER IV.
GERALD AUNGIER, GOVERNOR
OF BOMBAY.
WHO EIE W.A.S.
His first appearance in Bombay was on the
18th September, 1662, when, deputed by the
Surat Government, he stood side by side with
the Earl of Marlborough to claim this island for
the King of England. He thus saw the first of
us in this quarter. By his name we take it that
he came from Angers in France,” and that he
was a Huguenot whose forefathers had fled to
England after the religious massacres in that
place (1562-72). He was of good family. His
shield of arms, blazoned on the chalice in the
Bombay Cathedral, shows a demi-griffin and a
boar passant. No likeness or description of him
that we are aware of has been preserved, and we
know the man only by his acts. On the death
of Sir Geo. Oxenden, 14th July 1669, he suc-
* There is no such name as Aungier in the Paris Directory, but
several of the name of Angel's. Almost all French names, since
the Norman conquest, have been slightly altered on their intro-
duction into England. We observe also that Mr. Campbell, in
the Gazetteer, Spells it Angier. -
11
82 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
ceeded him as President of Surat and Governor
of Bombay, to which he paid a short visit early
in 1670. He came again to Bombay in May
1672, and resided here until 1675, dying in June,
1677. “General Oxenden was the first Governor
under the Company’s rule, but he never resided
for any length of time in Bombay. Under Pre-
sident Aungier Bombay became the established
seat of the Company’s rule, and the rest of the
factories in Western India, including Surat, were
placed in subjection to it.”
During these sixteen years Aungier was the con-
temporary of Seevajee. They eyed each other across
the narrow boundary of English and Mahratta
dominion, and though sometimes in conflict were
never mortal enemies, never bosom-friends.
WHAT HE DID.
I. He it was who first among the English
people, and long before the name of Calcutta was
ever heard of, was confronted with the problem
of how to govern an assembly of Moslems,
Bindoos, and Parsees. He found the element
within themselves, and never refusing the good
from whatever quarter it came, which he quickly
saw in the Punchayet or representative five men
from each section, worked it up into the fabric of
GERALD AUNGIER, GOVERNOR OF BOMBAY. 83
self-government, and made this institution respon-
sible for the good behaviour of their respective
communities, something, he says, like what is
known in history as English incorporations.”
2. The fortifications engaged much of his
time : bastion, hornwork, curtain, and embra-
sure, attempted, continued, or finished. A dock
was made. A town laid out on the site of a few
fishermen’s huts. A judge was settled. A court-
house was established in the most frequented
part of the bazaar, convenient for all litigants,
“ char derwaza kolah. ” (four doors open).f
The Militia was embodied, 600 in number ;
police was established ; and, finally, a Mint was
authorized to commence operations.j
3. He was called in 1674 to quell a mutiny
among the English soldiers, and the first execu-
tion by martial-law, or any law as far as we can
learn, in Bombay as an English settlement, was
* The Punchayet or five men is an essential part of the village
system in India. Mountstuart Elphinstone, who does not mention
Aungier in his “History of India,” has this significant note.
. Writing in 1820 on the Punchayet, he says: “The Government,
although it did little to obtain justice for the people, left them
the means of procuring it for themselves.”
# My room is a thoroughfare from morning to night ; no
moonshis, dewans, dubashes, or even chobdars, but char
derwazah, kolah, that, the inhabitants of these countries may
learn what our principles are at the fountain head.”—Sir John
Malcolm. *
t In 1670 was established a Mint in Bombay, which was con-
firmed by Letters Patent in 1676. Mr. Smith arrived in 1681 as
Assay Master and Mint Master at a salary of £60 per annum. In
1672-3, some bright genius recommended the coinage in Bombay
to be as follows:–Gold Carolinas ; silver Angelinas; copper
Copperooms; and tin Timºvies.—Bruce's Ammals.
84 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
ordered by him. That execution took place on
the 21st October, 1674, when Corporal Fake was
shot. The first man who suffered death by the
law under English administration was a white
man,—evidence surely enough of the unswerving
impartiality of the English Government, when we
offered up one of ourselves on the altar of Law
and Justice. -
4. Our right to Colaba is founded on a deed
which he, this same year, wrested from the Por-
tuguese, and his far-seeing eye pointed it out as
specially adapted for a military cantonment (a
judgment which has since been endorsed by Lord
Magdala), so that not one inch of it, for a century,
was alienated by Government. .
5. It was in his day that Bombay was declar-
ed an asylum to all merchants and manufacturers.
Whoever you are that are oppressed by Moghul
or Patham, Seevajee, Seedee, or Portuguese,
come here and enjoy the fruits of your labour.
This is a city of refuge; your lives and property
will be protected ; our arms are wide enough to
embrace you all. The judgment of the Indian
Council at Surat on his death, might have been
appropriately inscribed on his tomb : “Amid a
succession of difficulties he preserved the English
trade for sixteen years.”
GERALD AUNGIER, GOVERNOR OF BOMBAY. 85
6. The population which he found in Bombay
consisted of vagabonds and fugitives, for the
most part, and he waged war with their excesses
in every form. He had been bred in the school
of Cromwell, and not in the soft and silken man-
ners of Charles the Second. Hence he was the
declared enemy of Sabbath profanation, drunken-
ness, duelling, gambling, and prostitution. He
saw that native concubines and mixed marriages
with the Portuguese would drive the colony to
destruction, and he sent home for English wives
for the factors and others.
7. On the 3rd of October 1670, Seevajee in-
vaded and pillaged Surat of immense treasure, but
Aungier secured the lives and the property of the
Company. He was asked, when at Surat, to lower
the flag of the Company to that of the French
fleet, and he did not do it. The Dutch fleet
(with whom we were at war) hovered over Bom-
bay with 6,000 men, but was filled with terror
by his army of Bandoreens, those fierce fellows
who tap the toddy-trees, whom he armed with
clubs and bill-hooks.” When the Dutch saw
* Spenser must have had something like a vision of these
Bandoreens, from his fine description of the men of our coasts.
“And on his head a roll of linnen plight
Like to the Moores of Malabar he wore,
With which his locks, as black as pitchy night,
Were bound about and voided from before. *
And in his hand a mighty iron club he bore.”
The Faery Qweene.
86 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
them they quickly sailed away. Orme says that
on this occasion Aungier “exerted himself with
the calmness of a philosopher and the courage
of a centurion.” Manuel de Saldanha, the Por-
tuguese General at Bassein, made a vow that
unless we complied with his conditions he would
invade Bombay and take it by force. He was
actually on the march, but when he saw the
attitude of Aungier he beat a retreat, and the
English laughed.
8. But he was more than stubborn,--he was
wise. The English at this time never could have
held together by mere courage without brains.
To “temporize” and return evasive answers, in
these days, was the highest wisdom. His con-
stant reply to Moghul and Mahratta, Seevajee and
Seedee, was : we are merchants ; we can take
neither one side nor another, Hence we find him
one day sheltering in the harbour, and another
day refusing to admit, the Moghul fleet. Thrice
he sent envoys and made treaties with Seevajee, on
the third occasion sending ambassadors to be pre-
sent at his coronation ; and you may be sure that
his “weather-eye” was constantly open to every
movement of Alumgir, “the Lord of the world.”
9. The glory of Aungier, however, was that
of an administrator, and exhibits him in the light
GERALD AUNGIER, GovERNOR OF BOMBAY. 87
of one of the most far-seeing, and one of the most
liberal-hearted men of his age, making us believe,
without any other evidence, that he was bred in
the school, if he did not actually sit at the feet of
John Milton. If so, the disciple is above his
master.” We are sure our Aryan brethren will
rejoice in the man who first in India, ages before
Queen’s Proclamations, recognised the equality
of all religions before the law, and first granted to
them the precious boom of toleration. What .
follows, though it refers specially to the Banias,
may be held to apply to all sects. In the engage-
ment with the Banias of Diu (when this flourish-
ing caste first made their appearance in Bombay
history) the Company stipulated that they were
to enjoy the free exercise of their religion with-
out molestation, to be allowed to burn their dead,
and to perform all their ceremonies in peace.
“Lastly, it was engaged that none who profess
their religion, of whatever age, sex, or condi-
tion he might be, should be compelled to
embrace Christianity.”f The date of this is the
22nd March, 1677. These are marvellous words,
and they were not idle words. The Banias, from
that day to this, have burned their dead on the
* Of course on the question of toleration.
† Anderson's “Western India, 1854.”
88 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
edge of Back Bay, and have performed their
ceremonies without let or hinderance. It was
reserved for the natives of this island to enjoy
privileges, which were then, owing to the violence
of party, denied to many of our own countrymen
in the land of their birth. We may well, there-
fore, claim for Aungier the character of a states-
man, though he was the Governor of an island
only sixteen square miles in extent.
, TRAITS.
You ask me if he was a religious man 2 Yes,
severely religious—a puritan. But it is a curious
fact that your religious men very often, when
emergencies occur in national affairs, come to the
front. He phrased religiously, and the man was
not ashamed. So when the plague was raging
and men were dying like flies, he wrote –“ It
hath pleased God to let us see what we are by
the frequent mortalities that have happened
among us.” On handing over the business of
Surat to his successor he gave him this parting
salute : “We recommend to you the pious order
observed in our family, to wit, morning and
evening prayer.”
In these dim old times of how many a ship it
might have been said—
“On India’s long expected shores
Their sails were never furled ; ”
GERALD AUNGIER, GOVERNOR OF BOMBAY. 89
so when a vessel was signalled at Walkeshwur or
Dewa Damdi there is a Laus Deo, “Thanks be to
Almighty God.” On the death of his chief
surveyor, Colonel Bake, and just three months
before his own decease, he wrote: “We desire
Almighty God to prepare us all for our last
change.” We are not going, as some men have
done, to carp, cavil, or make light of all this.
Read Carlyle's Cromwell aright, and you will not
quarrel with Aungier. -
HIS SILVER CHALICE.
Two years before his death he presented to
the Christian community of Bombay a silver
chalice. This was in 1675. The Cathedral was
not opened until 1718, the congregation having
previously met in a room within the castle-walls.
There is now lying in the Cathedral this oldest
tangible memorial of our existence as an English
settlement. Deeply indented, in somewhat rude
lettering, but as clear as if it had been cut yes-
terday, is the compact inscription –
EIUNC CALICEM
IEUCEIARISTAE SACRUIM ESSE
VOLUIT
EIONORAIBILIS GIERALDUS
AUNGIERUS, INSULAE BOMBAIZE
GUBERNATOR, AC PRO REBUS HONORABILIS
ANGLORUM SOCIETATIS INDIJS
ORIENTALIBUS, MERCATORUM AGENTIUM PRAESES,
IILLUSTRII.
AERAE CHRISTIANAE.
ANNO 1675.
90 f BOOK OF BOMBAY.
It redounds greatly to the credit of the ecclesi-
astical authorities in this city that this priceless
theirloom, amid all our vicissitudes and fluctua-
tions of population, has been handed down to us
from age to age. There is no harm, however, in
the gentle reminder specially in the last clause:
“Rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through
and steal.” If Bombay were Venice, it would
appear in the Reliquary of St. Marks, with can-
dles burning before it night and day. It weighs
137 tolas, so it can never “ be sold for much.”
Nevertheless such a memorial as this in Bombay
history should be placed beyond the reach of all
accidents whatever. -
WEHERE HE LIVED,
Few of our readers have been in the Bombay
arsenal, but more, we daresay, would go if they
knew what it contained. It is a step from the
Cathedral, but people do not go there. Somehow
the Mint and Townhall seem to block up the ave-
nues to it and debar all progress; and yet the sen-
tries ask you no questions. You pass under a
lofty gate, which was built before “the well of
English” either defiled or “undefiled” was poured
forth in this quarter; in other words, before the
English occupied Bombay. The two figures which
GERALD AUNGIER, GOVERNOR OF BOMBAY. 91
look down upon you are manifestly Portuguese
soldiers, in their trunk-hose, the knickerbockers
of those days. Each bears aloft the great globe
itself, significant emblem of an inflated idea of
dominion by sea and land. The folding-gates
are of massive teak, scarred and blackened with
round holes made by the Seedees' shot, smooth and
glistering with countless coats of tar, and the
hands of generations of men passing in and out,
and sorely wizened and weather-beaten by two
hundred monsooms. You now ask, where is
Bombay Castle P You are already in it—a fact
which the soldiers, who mount guard day and
might, know to their cost and the place where
you now stand is that delectable garden, “voiced”
with so many pleasantries, which you have often
read of, belonging to the Portuguese, and which
the English soon filled with “bold ramparts.”
On one of these grows a brab or palmyra tree,
shooting up seventy or eighty feet high, the last
of a family-group which once stood together, and
are laid down in the oldest charts of Bombay
harbour, and which of yore gladdened the hearts
of our sea-sick progenitors. They used to be
the landmarks first seen by the sailor making
Bombay harbour, but time and the cyclone of
1854 have reduced their number to one ; and the
92 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
new clock-tower, or the tower where the clock
should be, is now the highest point seen from a
distance. We never knew what towers Heber
referred to in the lines,
“Bombay, they say, thy towers gleam fair
Across the dark-blue sea.”
“ They say,” It is reality now. There are
some big banian trees here. Do trees make a
garden 2 At all events Milton did not think the
Garden of Eden perfect without planting a fine
banian tree in the midst of it. Wherever he got
it, from Strabo or Pliny, we claim it as one of
ourselves.
“The fig tree, not that kind for fruit renowned,
Put such as at this day to Indians known,
In Malabar or Deccan spreads her arms.”
You see this is a quiet shady place, suited for
reflection.
“These auntient ruines we never set our foot upon
them, -
But we tread upon some reverend historie.”
There are guns lying about of all sizes and
ages, 1679, 1681, some of them with beautiful
ornamentation, from small six-pounders—regular
“ spit fires—” up to the great gun weighing seven
tons, captured by the Duke of Wellington in
1803 at Ahmednugger. You now understand
from all these munitions of war, that though the
GERALD AUNGIER, GOVERNOR OF BOMBAY. 93
date of Bombay Castle in the Government Gazette
is a fiction, the Castle itself is no more a fiction
than the Castle of Otranto.
HIS HOUSE.
This section is archaeological, and may be skip-
ped by the uninterested. As soon as we enter the
gate, we see, right before us, in the middle of the
open space, a four-square house with the words,
“Pattern Room,” printed on it. If this is the
house you are in search of, it verily is an example
of the res angusta domi. One or two extracts
may help to clear up matters. Ovington was
here in 1689, and his book was published in 1696.
“In this Fort one of the Company’s Factors
always resides, who is appointed Governor.”
Hamilton was here in 1690. “Cooke built a
fort round an old square house, which served
the Portuguese as a place of retreat.” -
Fryer was here in 1673. “Cooke found a
pretty well situated, but ill-fortified house.” $
Ovington gives us, “A delineation of his Majes-
ty’s Citadel and Fort of Bombay, taken 2nd April,
I668.” It is partly perspective, and shows us
exactly how the place stood in Gerald Aungier’s
time. There is a sea-view and a land-view. It
is a picture of great value, where you may even
94. - IBOOK OF BOMBAY.
now easily identify some of the lines of circum-
vallation. The artist has taken his view from
the land side of the large tank opposite the Mint,
now on the road from Elphinstone Circle to the
Prince's Dock. In his view the tank appears as
a pond with ducks swimming in it: no doubt the
tank has been stone-faced later on. Taking our
position to-day on the artist’s view-point,
looking across the tank, and obliterating the low
tile-roofed houses, dykes, and trees which have
cropped up since 1668, we easily catch in the
perspective our slightly transmogrified friend,
the “Bombay Citadel,” alias “Pattern Room,”
and the truthfulness of the artist’s view bursts
upon us. It is a strong building, still in use,
and not what Burns calls -
“A houlet-haunted biggin”
Or kirk deserted by the riggin.”
That the walls of this “ house ’’ in the picture
slip right into the sea goes for nothing, for Bruce
in his “Annals’ tells us distinctly that the
bastions “ towards the sea " were not built in
1668, which by the way, must have been our
very first “ Reclamation.”
The lower storey of this house is vaulted and
.* “But towards the sea, batteries only were erected, as bas-
tions would be the work of the swbsequent years.-Bºwce’s Am-
7vals, vol. 2, page 288, 1670-71.
GERALD AUNGIER, GOVERNOR OF BOMBAY. 95
bomb-proof; the upper storey, modern. We are
told by those who have seen them, that the
stones in the jambs of the door are strongly
clamped with iron.* We have collated such
passages in history as bear upon the subject,
and personally inspected the building, but though
the strongest evidence we can now avail ourselves
of is in the affirmative, we prefer for obvious
reasons (with the usual caution of our country-
men) to assume the position of a querist. -
Is this the house in which Aungier resided,
and several of his successors—the Government
House, in fact, of Bombay in those early times,
the “house” we took over from the Portuguese,
our citadel, ark, Balla Killa, or Acropolis if you
please; and, if so, the cradle from which emerges
our Bombay history as an English settlement
We have initiated the question which may be
left for others to answer.
CONCLUSION.
The first great work which Bombay had to
accomplish was to fortify herself, so that like a
* Lord Edward Fitz Clarence's body was laid out in this
Pattern Room on its way to England. He died at Porendhur
and like his brother (the Earl of Munster) was full-brother of
Lady Falkland, the wisest and wittiest woman of her day
(Bombay.1848 to 1853), children of the Duke of Clarence, after-
wards William IV., by the celebrated actress, Mrs. Jerdan.
96 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
strong man girt in armour, she could look her
enemies boldly in the face.
“The Mahrattas are upon thee,” was the
first cry; but as time wore on the English
settlers found that they had more formidable
enemies to cope with even than the Mahrattas.
They came by sea, and they came by land
—not alone from the narrow boundaries of
Western India, but from far off countries
in Europe, with one of whom England was
at war—threatening to swallow up this little
outpost of commerce in the Indian seas ;
and though the cry was “ still they come”
from great nations—Holland, France, and
Portugal—Aungier, with “the soul of a stub-
born old Roman * in him, bared his arm on
those bastions which he threw up between Bom-
bay Castle and the sea, and defied them all. It
is to men such as these that we owe almost
everything we have and are. The reply, of
course, is, that if we had not had the luck to get
Aungier we would have obtained men quite as
good. Did Onore or Angengo, places of im-
portance in those days, have as good men 2 If
we are to believe the stubborn facts of history,
were they not nearly annihilated as trading
stations, the one by the ignorance and the other
GERALD AUNGIER, gover Nor of BoMBAY. 97
by the folly of the man who conducted its
affairs f*
Providence, as a rule, does not raise up men
like Aungier twice in a generation. When we
had “ the luck” to lose Aungier did we find such
another ? We are safe in saying that England
was never so low before or since, in this island
or in India, as she was at the close of Sir John
Child’s administration, when the Emperor of
Delhi raised the siege of Bombay on condition of
Child’s expulsion from India. It was a new
thing in English annals to have our envoys’ hands
tied behind their backs and laid prostrate
before Indian Royalty. But so it was. “He
did the disgrace,” and we had to lick the dust.
It is by comparisons such as these that the figure
of Aungier stands out in bold relief on the page
of history—the first man in India who taught us
the art of self-government and the wisdom of
dealing with our neighbours—sage in counsel and
* . At the close of the seventeenth century the English chief
of Angengo insisted on paying the queen, of this country a per-
sonal visit to pay his dues or taxes, against all remonstrances.
The chief and factors were murdered.
“Mr. Child. who did the disgrage, be turned out and ex-
%. This order is irreversible.” East words of Awrungzebe's
irman, dated 27th February, 1690. Harris and the other factors
were released from prison on the 4th of April, 1690; but the Seedee,
who had remained more than a year in Bombay, did not with-
draw his army until the 22nd of June, when the property cap-
tured by the English had been restored and the fine paid to the
Moghul. He then departed, having first set fire to the Fort of
Mazagon, and the same day William and Mary were proclaimed
in Bombay King and Queen of England.-Anderson. ,’
13
98 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
bold in action—the Moses, if you like, of our
English exodus whose last words were, “ be
strong and of good courage.” ”
Alexander Hamilton, the sea-captain, sailed
and traded in the Indian seas for thirty-five
years, 1688 to 1723. He was an “interloper,”
but the shrewdest of them all. This was the
judgment of the late Dr. Wilson, and that of the
Bombay Quarterly Review. Forty six years af-
ter the death of Aungier he penned these words:
“ The name of Mr. Aungier is much revered by
the ancient people of Surat and Bombay unto this
day.” Remarkable words when we consider that
they were written by an avowed enemy of the
Company, and by a Scotchman, of an English-
man, in the year 1723.
Of how many Bombay men, during the last
two hundred years, could such words have been
written, where reputations have sprung into
existence, like Jonah’s gourd, in a night, and
withered in a day ? We erect statues to our
heroes—to Aungier we give a nameless grave.
* “And no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.”
S E E W A J E E,
101
CHAPTER W.
SEEWAJEE.
No plunder no pay.—SEEVAJEE'S MAXIM.
The statement will surprise many people, that
the history of Western India is more abundant
in details than that of some parts of the British
Isles. Take the case of the Wigtown martyrs.
Two women were drowned for non-conformity in
the reign of Charles the Second, and though
Macaulay devoted a page or two to the narrative
in his History of England, and though Europe
and America were ransacked from one end to the
other, not one scrap or letter, printed or written,
bearing upon it about the same date as the judi-
cial murder could be discovered, and the souls of
righteous men were vexed from day to day at
the revilings of Mark Napier who consigned the
102 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
event to the region of ecclesiastical myth and ,
legend. It was proved independently of written
testimony, but not until an old Session Book was
discovered in the Wigtown Manse was scepticism
silenced. Now, had any event of a kindred
nature taken place in Western India about this
period, we would have every particular connect-
ed therewith duly chronicled at the time. Had
Seevajee tied Mr. Sterling, the Scotch clergyman
in Bombay of his time, to one of the fishing
stakes which them dotted the harbour and left
him to be devoured by the waves and the sharks,
we should never have heard the end of it. Every
man and woman would have sat down and written
long accounts to their friends at home, which
would no doubt have been preserved for our edifi-
cation, and so nothing would have been left to
tradition. In the same way, in the sack of
Surat in 1664, we make little doubt that an
industrious bookworm could make a complete
inventory of every pot and pan taken out of it
by Seevajee. In the History of Western India,
there is nothing more apalling than the amount
of materiel, in English, French, Portugese, Ita-
lian, Dutch, Persian, and Arabic, even Chinese is
laid under contribution. -
These remarks apply in part to Seevajee, the
SEEVAJEE, [03
greatest man im Mahratta history. Though
many people have vague notions about him, the
books letters and journals in several languages
from which the story of his life may be gathered
are so full and minute in every particular, that
a work like Lord Hailes’ Annals of Scotland,
though it was praised by Dr. Johnson, becomes
in comparison dry annal or mere conjecture.
The obvious defects of this sketch are there-
fore not due to want of materials.
HIS COUNTRY.
It has been said by geologists that the Ghauts
were the great seawall against which an ancient
Ocean hurled its remorseless waves and that Ma-
theran and Mahableshwur were islands. Were
those black bluff headlands we now call Chowk
or Sidney Points once fragrant with samphire
and sea pink? Did the waves fret and eddy
round the knob of Parbhul or One Tree Hill, OP
mould these cone-like masses we now see rising
from the Konkan plain, or
“ Boil in endless torture *
in tumbling abysses under the very nose of that
Sphynx-like projection on Louisa Point 2 Were
the Fummel Hill (Kurnala) and Lingama Ghur
fashioned into their present form by the action
104 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
of the waves; grinding, rounding, and polishing,
as if by the hands of a cunning artificer, these
mighty outlying bulwarks or skerries of a
primaeval sea 2 We cannot answer these ques-
tions. Our business is with the Deccan of history
and of Seevajee.
The highest bit of earth in the Deccan is
Kulsabhai, 5,409 feet over sea level.” But the land
bristles with hundreds of mountains from 2,000
to 5,000 feet in height, with steep scarps of
volcanic trap crowned with forts and bastions, with
almost everyone of which is indelibly associated
the name of Seevajee. This mountainous region
seems to bid defiance to the foot of man and
horse. Khafi Khan, who was much about Raighur
Seevajee's principal residence, fsays:—“The coun-
try around may be considered a specimen of hell,
for it is hilly and stony and water is very scarce.”
Let the strongest pedestrian in this year of grace
1880, as a piece of holiday exercise, travel to and
ascend, say twelve, out of the five and forty hill
forts captured by Seevajee. Let him furnish him-
self before starting with “Galton’s Art of
Travel,” Crosse and Blackwell’s tinned meats and
the best Deccany tattoo he can lay hands on, and
* Qn your right as you go to Nassick.
f About ten miles from Dasgaum.
SEEVAJEE. 105
every appliance and comfort of modern times, and
we will be bound to say that his thews and sinews
and “poor feet” will come out of the expedition
much the worse of the wear. As for his boots
and shoes he may throw them to the dogs, cast
himself on the first charpoy he can get, and hum
himself asleep to a long season of repose with the
tune of -
“I’ll gang nae mair to yon town.” “
He will, however, have learned a lesson of the
marvellous toughness and endurance of the
|Mahratta, and more than this be filled with ad-
miration at what were once heroic virtues—
walking, running, and climbing. “ The best
runner,” said Seevajee,” makes the best soldier.”
HIS BIRTH.
Some of the kings of the East have had a very
humble origin. The first Nabob of Oude was a
petty merchant, the first Peshwa a village ac-
countant, Hyder Ali’s father was a belted peon
and commenced life as a groom, the ancestors of
Holkar were goat herds, and those of Sindhia
slaves, the first of this family who became so
powerful was slipper bearer to the Peshwa, and
nearer our own time Mahomed Ali of Egypt
* Free translation : I will never go again to those places.
14
106 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
was the son of a tobacconist in Cavallo in Mace-
donia. - *
Seevajee's origin was a contrast to all these.
He did not rise from the ranks, but came from
an ancient line of Rajas, the Bhonslas, men in
the position of the great barons of England
when they were powerful enough to defy
alike sovereign and people. Both by father and
mother’s side his ancestors had won distinction
in the field as vassals of the Kings of Ahmed-
nugger and Bejapore. His mother was a Rajput,
and her name of Jadow was as old as the first
Mahometan invasion of India in the thirteenth
century, when Devgiri was the name of Dowlat-
abad, and ere ditch and scarp had made that re-
nowned fortress unscaleable except to the ant or
the lizard. His great grandfather was patel of
Verole, Ellora thus becoming
“The mother of a race of kings,”
an addition to its other wonderful attractions.
Both his father and grandfather were two of the
most powerful men in the Mahratta dominions,
the first in command of 5,000 horse. Seevajee
was born in the Fort of Jooneer or Sewneer” in
1627. Some one says, “ he was born in a fort
and died in a fort.”
* About twenty-four miles from Poona.
SEEVAJEE. 107
HIS PERSON AND CHARACTER.
Here is a good etching of him taken by an
European.” Scene Surat, aétat 37. Neither
Grant Duff nor Elphinstone seem to have been
aware of it. -
“His person is described by them whoe have
seen him to bee of meane stature, lower some-
what than I am erect, and of an excellent pro-
portion. Actual in exercise, and whenever hee
speaks seemes to smile, a quicke and peercing eye,
and whiter than any of his people. He is dis-
trustfull, seacret, subtile, cruell, perfidious, in-
sulting over whomsoever he getts into his power.
Absolute in his commands, and in his punish-
ments more than severe, death or dismember-
ment being the punishment of every offence if
necessity require, venterous and desperate in
execution of his resolves.”
This is by a contemporary on the spot, and
there is nothing left te us but a feeble attempt
to fill in the blank spaces between the lines.
And first of all, he was superstitious to a degree,
and we may be sure, that the cry of a hare, the
howl of a wolf, or the scream of a sarus distract-
lºcalliot to Sir Thomas Browne, author of Religio Medici,
108 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
ed him, and schemes of the greatest moment
were suspended, if the augurs were against him.
When the English Ambassador in 1674 went
down to Raighur to “assist '' at his coronation,
he found Seevajee had gone on a pilgrimage to
Purtabghur to a pagoda of the goddess Bowanee
and Oxenden and his companions were detained
a month in the Fort, until his idle ceremonies at .
Raighur were accomplished. He was mightily
imbued with his religious rites and ceremonies
and would do anything to carry them through.
Witness his landing at Malabar Point, at mid-
night and at the hazard of his life, to pass through
the stone of Regeneration. He was most attach-
ed to his mother and exercised filial obedience
until death divided them, and he was kind to
his dependants and relations. It is said that his
manners were remarkably pleasing and his ad-
dress winning. This refers to men, but it is not
so well known that he had a wonderfully fasci-
nating power over women. We do not prove
this by the fact that he had three wives and
married a fourth two days after his coronation in
the 47th year of his age.
But a story which Mackintosh heard at Hyder-
abad seventy years ago has come down to us.
It appears that when a prisoner at Delhi he exer-
SEEVAJEE. 109
cised this glamourgift so effectually, that one of
the Princesses of the House of Timur, a daughter
of Aurungzebe, was devoured by love for him. No
doubt, a glance from behind the purdah did it all.
However, it lasted her for life. Seevajee was told by
“ the cruel parient,” and she also, no doubt, that
the marriage could not come off unless he be-
came a Muslim. This could not be, and it is an
affecting instance of the power and endurance
of youthful affection that Moti Bowreah, such
was her pet name, never married and in extreme
old age long” after Seevajee was dead and burned
tended his grandson and carefully watched his
up-bringing. Some of Aurungzebe's daughters
were most accomplished, full of music poetry
and all that sort of thing, which Seevajee loved so
well that he would go a long way out of his beat
to attend a kutha or meeting of bards and singers.
A tomb of white marble was erected to her
memory—and she well deserved it—which
may still be seen near Bejapore, an oasis in the
desert.
HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS.
He was a good horseman, swordsman, and
marksman. He had sprung from a race of
* Twenty-seven years after.
110 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
mighty hunters and athletes. His father died an
old man from a heavy fall he had from his horse
in the hunting field. His spare wiry form and
small stature admirably adapted him for climb-
ing and his training from boyhood put him on a
par with the best climbers in the Deccan. Every
corrie, gulch, and Jacob’s ladder was better known
to him than the tulsi plant at his own door. He
not only loved climbing for its own sake, but
admired and rewarded it in others. When he
had finished the fortifications of Raighur he one
day called an assembly of the people and held out
a bag of gold and a bracelet worth Rs. 500 as a
reward to any man who accomplished the ascent
in any way except through the gate he had con-
structed, and without rope or ladder. A Mhar
ascended, planted the flag, then quickly descend-
ed and made his obeisance to Seevajee. The man
received the rewards in presence of the assembly
and was set at liberty. We need not add that the
way by which he ascended was closed.
His power of endurance is a perfect mystery.
Take his flight from Delhi.” All the way to
Allahabad was his son with him, a lad nine years
of age, at first mounted “ ride and tie ’’ on the
same Deccany tattoo, then on foot disguised as
* Escaped in a hamper.
SEEWAJEE, III
a fakir, his face rubbed with ashes, swimming
rivers with his kupra on his head to keep it dry,
outrunning the swiftest trained couriers of the
Great Moghul, and this during the monsoon
through a thickly wooded country from Allaha-
bad to Benares, from Benares to Gaya, from Gaya
to Cuttack, from Cuttack to Hyderabad.
Or his might raid into Poona in 1663. He left
Singhur after dark, entered the gate as part of
a marriage procession, attacked the Mahomedan
Viceroy’s palace, slashed off two of his fingers
as he descended from a window, killed his son
and most of his attendants. It seemed the work
of a moment ; and that same night he ascended
Singhur amid a blaze of torches visible from
every part of the Moghul camp.”
Seevajee was weighed against gold and turned
the scales at 112 lbs. This was good riding
weight ; though a small man he had infinite
pluck. A weasel has been known to fly at the
throat of a man on horseback, and Seevajee had a
fierce will and intensity of purpose, and was full
of resolve.
“Come on Resolve and lead the van
Thou stalk of carlehemp in man.”
* Let the reader take a note of heights and distances, and “the
roads before they were made ’’ on his first picnic to Karackwasla.
It was on this road that Colonel Mignon lost his life crossing a
torrent during the monsoon. º
I 12 |BOOK OF BOMBAY.
The most distinguished Mahratta, awkward and
sturdy at the best, was ungainly side by side
with Seevajee.
He never could sign his own name. He had,
however, a Persian writer and a keeper of his
seal which was put to all documents. This, how-
ever, need not be held as a crime against him.
Our readers will recollect the words put into the
mouth of Archibald Bell-the-Cat in Scott's Mar-
miom. He is speaking of Gawain Douglas, Bishop
of Dunkeld, the translator of Virgil,
“Thanks to Saint Botham, son of mine,
Save Gawain ne'er could pen a line.”
Though his face was white his shendee was as
black as the raven’s wing.
“Spare and swarthy
Cruel and crafty.”
PART SECOND.
Happy for him if he had lived to see
His country beggar'd of the last rupee.
SIR PHILIP FRANCIS.
I have searched for Seevajee’s motto in vain.
His war cry and that of his Mawulees was Hur
Hur Mahadeo. I have come to the conclusion that
his motto was the one engraven on the heart tablet
of all cattle lifters and man lifters, and which the
SEEVAJEE. . 113
great Scotch Reiver Cranston of Cranston had the
honesty to carve on the architrave of his castle
gate— -
** Whoever wants I’ll no want.”
TRAITS BAD AND GOOD.
He had a weakness for cutting off hands. Mea-
dows Taylor makes one of his characters shudder
in the shadow of a dark passage, as his eye sud-
denly caught sight of a human hand swimming
in a bason of blood.
When James Forbes was at Dubhoy, a hundred
years afterwards, his party were much tormented
by a reiver in the jungle. At breakfast one
morning his Bheels entered with a tray on which
W3,S something covered with a cloth. Present of
a peacock or a haunch of venison 2 The Bheels
with a grin of delight lifted the coverlet, when
lo and behold the head of the wild man of the
woods. I fancy Seevajee’s morning meal was (not)
disturbed occasionally by a similar incident.
“I have found thee, O ! mine enemy,” after
which, digestion would go on with accelerated
pace, like a dram in the morning to a confirmed
toper.
He had a news intelligencer whose duty it was
no doubt to poise himself in naked majesty for
15
114 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
hours on some outlying bastion or “coigne of
vantage,” look at the sun without winking, mew
his mighty youth and preen himself,” scanning
with falcon eye the great plains from Wassota to
Purundhur, or worm secrets from some spy or
straggler, and report the same to Seevajee or his
mother who lay huddled up like a bundle of
clothes, chewing betelnut in some corner of the
“Palace.” This man was Seevajee’s “Press Com-
missioner,” but wrote nothing, his business
being “word o’mouth,” for Seevajee disliked
writing and writing men, like Lord Lake,
“Damn your writing
Mind your fighting.”
In size, in physique, in soldier-like qualities,
and in powers of endurance, the nearest likeness
to him in our day, making allowance for the
difference of the times was Sir Charles Napier, and,
for a certain impetuosity and ubiquity, Seevajee
comes nearer to “ the bearded vision of Sind ’’
than any other man we know of.
In this last quality Seevajee was a perfect
Sheilan ka bhaee. This from Napier's diary will
do well enough for Seevajee.
“In 1845 I rode a camel seventy-two miles
* We all know what that means in India.
SEEWAJEE. 115
without a halt one night which is said to equal
in fatigue one hundred and forty. I was once on
horseback without being knocked up twenty-two
hours. Napier, on the scene of Afzul Khan’s
murder on his way to Mahableshwur, is a piece of
quiet writing and curious in its way.
“The scene of Seevajee’s honest conduct ' | He
and his wagnuck, it is their way; Seevajee, the
founder of the Mahratta power, met Afzul Khan,
the Bijapore General, at an arranged conference,
pretending to embrace him, and having pre-
viously armed his own hands with steel claws—
the wagnuck—tore him open.”
That he bad some good qualities is undeniable.
His discipline, his practice of the toleration of
religion, his respect and treatment of women are
vouched for by his most inveterate enemies and
are beyond all praise. A Muslim writer of his
day says–
“ His orders were to do no harm to the
mosques, the Book of God, or the women of
any one.”
At a well which he built near Raighur, there
was a seat.
“Here Seevajee would sit down and when the
women of the traders and poor people came to
116 t BOOK OF BOMBAY.
draw water he would give the children fruit aud
talk to the women as to his mother and sisters.”
All honour to him for a course of conduct
which was entirely reversed by that “ unlicked
cub,” his son and heir Sumbajee.
When the army was on the move Seevajee would
not allow a woman in it, and it is said when thus
occupied that he would rather hear the neighing
of his enemies’ horses than the sound of a
woman’s voice.
HIS TWO GREAT CRIMES.
As the gates of Mahratta history are thrown
wide open to us, we see depicted thereon like the
bas reliefs of Ghiberti two great crimes. They
are crimes of such conspicuous magnitude that
in modern times they have only been equalled by
Mahomed Ali’s massacre of the Mamelukes and
Napoleon’s murder of prisoners at Jaffa. They
are the same in kind, but different in degree.
The end was the same. They were the first great
strokes of Seevajee’s policy and the blood then
shed cemented the foundation of the Mahratta
Empire.
The Purtabghur tragedy is so well known that
we merely name it. The murder of the Raja of
Jowly is less known. He was owner of all the
SEEVAJEE. 117
hilly country south of Poona from the Ghauts
inclusive to the sources of the Krishna, and had
remained strictly neutral during Seevajee’s pro-
gress to power.
Seevajee sent a Brahmin to open negotiations
for his own marriage to the daughter of the Raja
of Jowly. With his knowledge and approval, the
|Brahmin assassinated the Raja, which Seevajee
followed up by taking possession of his country,
towns, villages, and forts.
HIS MASTER PASSION
Was the love of money. All other passions
were subordinate to this. The power of the sword
is great—the power of money, “ the sinews of
war,” is greater. It booted little that Scevajee was
a good swordsman, marksman, a fit soldier in his
shirt of mail cap a pie, if he had no money. He
early in life recognised this truth, plundering
peaceful kafilas, and carrying the proceeds to
Torna. The cunning fellow when he took posses-
sion of this fort, dug up the treasure as if by
accident—a miracle of the goddess Bhowanee.
In every step of his onward progress, his
necessities became the greater until he had a
mint of his own at Raighur.
“ His desire of money is soe great that he
118 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
spares noe barbours cruelty to extort confessions
from his prisoners at least cutts off one hand,
sometimes both. . . . There were then about
four heads and twenty-four hands cutt off.” If
for nothing else than bribery he required money.
It was bribery first opened the gates of Torna
and Singhur. More potent than the sword of
Bhowaneef (for when all else failed), it struck down
the supple courtiers of Delhi and Bejapore.
He bribed the Viceroy of the Deccan. With-
out bribery he never could have escaped from
Delhi, and without bribery he never had been
able to assassinate Jowly or Afzul Khan. But
to carry on the business of a great State, to equip,
say 30,000 horse and 40,000 infantry as in the
expedition to the Carnatic in 1676, required large
funds, and the national robbery—we can call it
nothing else which he perpetrated on a great
scale—supplied him with the means of doing so.
Hence the annals of Seevajee are just a long series
of burglaries and piracies. There was first the
royal convoy at Kallian, then followed the sack
of Jooneer, and the plunder of ships to the Red
Sea and Mecca, the booty from Rajapur and
* Escalliot to Brown.
f The Genoa, blade presented to the Prince of Wales in 1875
during his visit to India by the Raja of Kolapore and now in
the Indian Museum,
SEEVAJEE. 119
Dabul; Surat, which he sarcastically called his
“Treasury,” was twice sacked by him and yielded
enormous loot.
Barcelore, 130 miles below Goa, and other
rich mercantile towns on the coast, incredible
plunder from Hoobli and Jaulna, and forced con-
tributions from Karwar to Golconda. Revenue
with him meant war and war meant plunder.”
“No plunder no pay ” was his maxim. “Irob you
to reward my soldiers” was the salvo he laid
to his breast. So early as 1665 at the Treaty of
Purundhur, so anxious was he for a settlement
with the Moghul that he engaged to pay forty
lakhs of pagodas or two crores of rupees, and we
do not wonder at it. He was quite good for five
times the amount.
He was often gorged with plunder. Of goods,
for example, he had often more than he knew
what to do with, and as much perplexed as a
merchant whose warehouses are overstocked. He
wanted money, not goods. An Agra merchant
came to him when he was at Surat thinking to
propitiate him with 40 oxen loads of cotton goods.
Seevajee said, “where is your money P. The man
* “When the Mahrattas proceeded beyond their boundaries,
to collect revenue and make War were Synonymous.”—Grant
Dw.ff,
I 20 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
replied, “I have had no time to sell my goods.”
The man's right hand was immediately cut off,
and his goods burned before his face : Yes, that
man ought to have had money.
Every year added to the pile at his great
robbers’ dem of Raighur. There is one night
during the Dewali when the Hindoo brings out
all his treasure and worships it. Seevajee’s god,
pour l’eaposition, must have been overpowering,
gold, silver, diamonds and rubies, with cloth of
gold and the richest vestments of Asia, “ gar-
ments rolled in blood,” a heap worthy of Tyre
or Babylon. When he died he must have had
several millions in specie at Raighur, rupees,
Spanish dollars, gold mohurs of Hindustan and
Surat, pagodas of the Carnatic, Venetian sequins,
and Sycee silver.
He loved diamonds and pearls much, for they
are easily carried. On his flight from Delhi, a
phoujdar recognised him, and a diamond and
ruby worth a lakh of rupees saved his life, the
phoujdar wisely concluding that they were more
valuable to him than the head of Seevajee. Even
then he had gold mohurs and pagodas in walking-
sticks, jewels in old slippers, rubies encased in
wax and concealed in the dress, and some jewels
in the mouths of his followers. Seevajee's period was
SEEWAJEE. 4. 121
the great diamond time when Tavernier found
60,000 people working at a single mine thirty
miles from Golconda. It was the gleam of a
diamond ring that made his eye sparkle even on
the coronation throne.
“The English made their obeisance at a dis-
tance and Narien Sinai held up the diamond
ring” (value Rs. 125) “ that was to be presented
to him. He presently took notice of it, and order-
ed their coming nearer even to the foot of the
throme.” Noble king ! Gracious Sovereign
Hur Hur, Mahadeo / It was a monsoon morn-
ing and the sun was spear high. Did the Eng-
lish Ambassador throw his buckled slippers at
the king for luck and elbow his way barefoot
amid the unblessed and unbreeched multitude to
the foot of the august presence f History in-
forms us not, but we give as much as we can
gather from the Ambassador’s report.
Behold, then, this piece of dumb show on
the barren rock of Rairee.
SEEWAJEE'S CORONATION.
See him on his golden throne like a waxen
image at Madame Tussaud's. On one side of
him two heads of colossal fish with enormous
teeth all of solid gold, and on the other side
16
122 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
horses’ tails on the ends of lances, Tartar em-
blems, no doubt, of dominion by sea and land.
A pair of scales were suspended from the top
of a gigantic lance—a mockery—Cruelty and in-
justice having long since turned the beam and
sent up to Heaven the cry of an injured people,
a people whose homes were desolate, whose land
was untilled and unmanured, for whoever sowed
the seed Seevajee reaped the fruit—a people who
could scarcely keep body and soul together, who
built their houses with doors low enough that a
man could not enter on horseback, whose koon-
bies were objects of commiseration even to Bom-
bay coolies, whose Brahmins and merchants were
tortured with pincers until they told where their
money lay, and whose land, Deccan and Konkan,
in twenty years was reduced to the condition of a
desert.* We come to
HIS DEATH,
In the midst of “ these combustions ° in 1680
died Seevajee. Returns to Raighur after along and
bloody raid to Jalna, swelled knee joint, spitting
* In 1674 an English traveller near Rallian, with Several vil-
lages in sight, had great difficulty in procuring even a hen for his
breakfast.—Fryer. - -
Bombay, that was one of the pleasantest places in India, was
brought to be one of the dismallest of deserts.-Hamilton, 1688.
“And was nothing done for Justice, Bulwunt 3 Was Justice
dead in that country? Justice echoed Bulwunt Rao, Justice, ah.
meah, what can the poor do for Justice 3’—Targ.
SEEWAJEE, 123
of blood and all that sort of warning before death.
Goes to “where the wicked cease from troubling
and the weary are at rest.” Here we leave him.
Not so his Muslim historian Khafi Khan who
pursues him with relentless fury to the other world.
“ The date of his death is found in the words,
Kaffir bajahannim raft, the infidel went to hell,
which was discovered by the writer of these
pages.” i -
Here Napier's Sukkur address comes pat
enough. -
“ Gentlemen and beggars may ride to the
devil, but neither gentlemen nor beggars have
the right to send other people there.”
His place in history may be gathered from .
these words of Aurungzebe, Emperor of Delhi,
his greatest enemy who spent twenty years in
the Deccan in the vain endeavour to subdue him.
and those who came after him.
“He was a great captain and the only one
who has had the magnanimity to raise a new
kingdom while I have been endeavouring to
destroy the ancient sovereignties of India.
“My armies have been employed against him
for nineteen years and nevertheless his State has
always been increasing.”
Seevajee may be compared with Sir William
124 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Wallace. Both were well born. Both began
life with guerilla warfare. Both dwelt in a land
bristling with mountains, forts, and castles, and
both created out of chaos the seeds of a Nation's
Life and Character by dealing heavy blows on
the invader of their country. A Mahratta might
carry it farther, but here the likeness ends.
The judgment of well educated men in every
land will, we think, be in accordance with what
we believe to be the dictates of eternal justice
that while Seevajee was an aggressor on the liberty
of man, Wallace was the saviour of his country
and the hero of Scottish independence.
KANOJEE ANGRIA AND THE
PIRATES OF WESTERN INDIA.
127
CHAPTER WI.
KANOJEE ANGRIA AND THE
PIRATES OF WESTERN INDIA.
I fear thee, ancient Mariner,
I fear thy skinny hand ;
And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand. -
I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand so brown.—Coleridge.
J
EARLY NAVIGATION.
WAs the Arab or the Hindoo first in the race
of navigation ? Which was the main agent in
placing India en rapport with Europe? Arabia
has no timber : the architecture of the houses
and the building of the ships on the Red Sea
coasts, are clearly of Indian origin,” and yet the
earliest notices which have come down to us are
* Schweinfurth, 1873.
128 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
of Arab sailors. Nay more, the names of every
spar or piece of gear, rope, or tackle in an Indian
craft, from the dhow to the bandar-boat, are all
Arabic.” Both have certainly had a hand in
it. Though the Hindoo hates the kala panee, or
black water, India doubtless contributed the
timber, iron, and sails for the first vessels that
navigated the Indian Ocean. The Arabs, settled
from time immemorial on the coasts of Western
India, may have built and manned the ships;
but we must not forget the lascar and the place
he still holds, or the fact that it was a native
of Gogof who piloted Vasco da Gama into
Calicut, and that a Hindoo pirate directed the
point of attack made by Albuquerque on the
city of Goa. At all events, the subject of this
sketch was a Hindoo.
The native craft on these coasts have remained
very much the same for centuries, perhaps for
thousands of years. W. S. Lindsay, who navigated
a small vessel down the Persian Gulf, noticed that
everything nautical was as in the days of Near-
chus;i and if you lookinto Mariette’s Museum at
* Anthony Vaz, Marine Interpreter, 1879.
f G990 at this time was almost a Mussulman town.—Bombay
Gazettee”.
# W. S. Lindsay, History of Shipping, 1875.
KANOJEE ANGRIA AND THE PIRATES. 129
Boulak, you will see that the silver models of
ancient Egypt are the counterparts of the bugga-
lows which now sail on the Red Sea,” or of
those in Bombay Harbour. The Indian Ocean,
as far as we know, has never been without ships,
and apparently never without pirates, for the
dawn of history no sooner opens upon us than
we meet with them on the coasts of Western
India. Almost every traveller, both before and
after the Christian era, notices them. The
greatest of them all in either ancient or modern
times was the lord of
ANGRIA’S KOLABA,
Called Kanojee, who had his dwelling place
twenty miles from Bombay, and was born at
Angarwadee, from which he took his name. The
period embraced by the history of the Angrias,
from the first notice of the family in 1690 to the
year 1840, when for want of a legitimate de-
scendant their territory lapsed to the British
Government, is one hundred and fifty years. They
once held a great slice of land in our immediate
neighbourhood, at their acmé 150 miles in
length by 30 to 60 miles in breadth. Before the
close of their existence their revenue had dwindled
* See also Laborde, 1836.
130 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
down to three lakhs of rupees. They have
a very respectable genealogical tree, counting
about ten rulers, and mustering seven generations,
full of Kanojees, Manajees, and Raghojees.”
There is no obscurity whatever about their origin
or their disappearance from the page of history.
The first man of the name was Tookajee, who
served in the
FLEET OF SEEVAJEE.
It was a great mercy that Seevajee was not a
seaman, otherwise he might have swept the sea,
as he did the land, with the besom of destruc-
tion. Even as it was he was very nearly doing
it. He liked the sea, but the sea did not like
him. So strong was his love of the salt-sea wave
that when a young man he took up his abode at
Mhar, on the Bankote Creek, and resided there
four years; and farther down the coast,at Malwun,
he is said to have worked with his own hands at
* Here they are, with dates as far as known to us:—
Tookajee * tº º tº e • * ~ * ... 1689
Kanojee .. © tº gº tº ſº tº iº gº 1689 to 1728
Sakojee º & tº e tº a * Q e & 1728 to 1734
Sambhajee .. tº e tº e tº e © tº 1734 to 1735
Manajee I... tº e © tº tº º * 1735 to 1759
Raghojee . . • * gº, © tº e tº gº 1759 to 1793
Baburao . . . . . . . . . . . . 1799 to 1813
Manajee II... tº º tº tº tº tº tº º 1813 to 1817
Raghojee 1817 to 1838
Ranhojee, a few months old, died. gº tº ... 1839
EANOJEE ANGRIA AND THE PIRATES. 13]
the fortifications of Sindoodroog. His foot-prints
are still shown here, not on “the sands of time,”
but in the solid rock ; and the “erring brother,”
meaning no harm, worships him as an avatar;--
silver mask for every day; gold mask for burra
din or big days.” Poor Seevajee, who is now
worshipped as a god, was sea-sick like ordinary
mortals; and though he arrayed himself in red
fez with jewelled tassel, a big green wave off the
Chawl Kudur would have no mercy on him, but
bowl him over, hubble-hubble and all, into the
lee-scuppers; and them—bilge-water and mal de
772.627°.
“The victor overthrown ;
The arbiter of others’ fates
A suppliant for his own.”
On the land Seevajee was a robber ; on the sea
and sea coast he was a pirate, and his achievements
in this last department were by no means
contemptible. Here are his chief maritime
exploits in historical order. He got 1)abul and
its dependencies from Aurungzebe ; occupie
several neglected forts on the coast for purp
of piracy ; opened batteries against Jin
built Rairee, Malwum, Severndroog,
droog, and prepared vessels at all i
* Nairn's Konfln, 1875






I 32 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
made Kolaba, twenty miles from Bombay, his
principal arsenal, from which he effected consi-
derable captures; commanded, once only, his fleet
of 85 frigates (30 to 150 tons) and 3 great ships
(3-masted vessels). This was when he sacked
Barcelore; and six years afterwards, when his
fleet had grown into 160 ships, by way
of maval demonstration and “ show off,” he
brought it round to the mouth of Back Bay to
let us see what stuff he was made of. He cap-
tured a large Portuguese ship off Damaun ; he
took Carwar; refused our ambassadors at his
coronation to treat on the question of wrecks ;
and finally, the year before he died, fortified
Kenery, so that from it, like another Tenedos,
he might watch the Bombay shipping before
it entered our Hellespont. We give these
details to show the hereditary training of
the Angrias. It was the sea that made
them, and without the sea they mever would
ave been heard of in history.
HE COMMERCE ASSAILED BY THE PIRATES
he beginning of the eighteenth century was
We must not suppose that the
was a small trade in those days.
lue thº-commerce that mow floats





KANOJEE ANGRIA AND THE PIRATES. 133
on Indian waters is beyond all precedent, but we
suspect from all we can learn that India then
monopolised as large a proportion of the gross
trade of the world as she does at present. There
were ships in those days. Alexander Hamilton
says, “My ship drew 21 feet of water. I saw a
dhow at Mocha : her mast was one piece as large
as the mainmast of a 74.”
There were merchants also, and money then
had thrice the purchasing power it has at present.
Vorge Vora, of Surat, was “reputed the
richest merchant in the world : estate worth 80
laks.” “.. I was acquainted with Abdul
Gafour,” says Hamilton : “he drove a trade
equal to the East India Company. When he
died the Court had a fling at his heirs, and got
about a million sterling from his estate.”f
“The honest factors of the Company, who wore
wigs and breeches, feared God and worship-
ped star-pagodas. ”f Child left his widow
£100,000, and the Oxendens founded the baro-
netcy of Brome, in the county of Kent, which
survives to this day.S The words of Adam
* Escalliott's letter to Sir Thomas Browne, 1664.
t A. Hamilton in Pinkerton's Thravels. -
† Wheeler. \\
§ Anderson, 1857.
134 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Smith, in 1776, are worthy of a passing thought :
“The East Indies offer a market both for the
manufactures of Europe and for the gold and
silver as well as for the other productions of
America, greater and more extensive than both
Europe and America put together.” Some
of the merchants in India hoarded their savings,
and others spent them with ostentation. Of the
Banian brokers of Surat it was observed, “They
are each worth 15 to 30 lakhs, and spend Rs. 3,000
to Rs. 4,000 per annum f ; and on the other
hand, the Emperor Jehangeer told Sir Thomas
Roe, our ambassador in 1615, after he had deli-
vered his gifts from the King of England, “Your
presents have been inferior to those a merchant
you have seen here has brought.”f
WHAT HE COST US.
Our readers would not thank us for a history
of Kanojee Angria’s exploits. Each of the three
great European nations in Indian waters had a
shy at him and his family, and each came off
second best. Though he died in 1728, his
piratical instincts were faithfully transmitted
to his posterity. Between 1724 and 1754, the
English lost 2 ships of war, French 1, Dutch 3.
* Wealth of Nations. f Ovington, 1689. f Roe's Embassy.
RANOJEE ANGRIA AND THE PIRATES. 135
We sometimes joined hands with the Portuguese,
then we tried company with the Mahrattas, and
again with the Seedee to batter down his forts, the
ramparts of which still frown from the great sea
walls of Western India. We hammered away at
Gheria, and our cannon-balls might as well have
been made up of cotton-wool or saw-dust for all
the execution they did. We had to keep a
special fleet to act against him, which cost us
£50,000 a year. When Angria took the Success
it involved us in a war with his family that
lasted 38 years. It was then, that he wrote
impudent, but clever letters to the Governor of
Bombay, for he could write, and was not like
Seevajee in this respect. In 1739 the merchants
of Bombay dug a ditch round the town, in
case he should come and measure his strength
with us at our own doors. And it was no
uncommon thing long afterwards for our
merchants, on the arrival of the fleet from
China, or elsewhere, to present the commander
of the ship of war which acted as convoy with
a purse of 500 sovereigns.
HIS CRowNING ACHIEVEMENT.
But the most startling feat of Angria was his
march to, and capture of, the fort of Loghur,
136 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
when he took the Peshwa prisoner, and pre-
pared to advance on Sattara, in 1713.
Passing Narel on your way to Poona, you may
see on your left a fort, conical in shape, twelve
miles away, Kotlighur, a small Dowlatabad in
appearance, and having also a spiral passage like
it, cut inside and through the rock, and some old
guns lying about it.” Further on, beyond
Kurjut, as you enter the Khundala Ghat, and
still on your left, across the gloomy ravine of
the Oolas, towers aloft Rajmachee, the Royal
Terrace, from which this sea-eagle looked down
and scanned the Konkan plaims. Still further on,
but now on your right at Lanowlee, is Loghur,
the killidar, of which, Dundoo Punt, was asked
by the Duke of Wellington in 1803 to “come
down.” He had not been down in the plain for
thirty years. It appears that Angria held Kotli-
ghur and Rajmachee for twenty-one years, from
1713 to 1734, when he presented these forts to .
the Peshwa. They commanded the highway to
Poona. Sattara was in a state of great trepida-
tion, and sent Ballajee Wishwanath, the ablest
man she had, with an army against Angria.
* We are indebted for these facts to Mr. Cousins, of the
Archaeólogical Survey, also that it is called by the natives Kotli.
Rilla, and lies twelve miles N. E. of Kurjut.
KANo.JEE ANGRIA AND THE PIRATEs. 137
Wishwanath turned his cheek to the smiter, and
the smiter extorted good terms on releasing the
Peshwa, being guaranteed in the possession of
ten forts and sixteen fortified places. And now,
lo and behold, Kanojee Angria is made Sarkheit
or Admiral of the Fleet, for the Rajah of Sattara;
and Wishwanath, who made the treaty on behalf
of the Bhonslas, was for his services on this im-
portant occasion created Peshwa, and became
founder of the dynasty of which, in our own day,
Bajee Rao was the last descendant. We thus see
that Angria was not altogether a sea-monster.
Seevajee at sea and Angria on land forsook their
native element. Angria’s country was, of course,
the pirate coast where every chokra, as soon
as he could float a mimic fleet of sedge and
bulrush, or paddle his own tony in his native
creek, kept a sharp-look out for “ flotsum
and jetsum.” His revenue was the “ cotton
of the sea,” the “ chouth of the sea,” and
the grist rolled on his rock-bound coast by
white and stormy waves. But he could
penetrate far inland, and take forts as well
as ships. He was a great land-shark, or
*mugger, if you will, who came up out of the
water and strode across the land, eating every
green thing for his mere diversion, “Behold
18
138 BOOK OF BOMIBAY,
Behemoth, he eateth grass as an ox.” + The
Angrias were not, however, to have it all their
own way. “The mills of the gods grind slowly,
but they grind exceeding small ;” so the
WENGEANCE
which seemed to sleep for forty years came upon
them at last. The British Government, which
had been always anxious to root out the nests of
piracy which lay along the Mahratta coasts, in
1755 commissioned Commodore James to do the
work; and he did it effectually at Severndroog, f
a few miles south of the Bankote river, taking
the four forts of which it consisted without the
loss of a single man. For its day, or any day,
this was a great naval success, and the Commo-
dore was made a baronet.
On Shooter’s Hill, London, there is a monu-
ment, erected to his memory by his widow from
* We cannot remember any instances of pirates carrying on
their depredations on land, except Paul Jones’ on the Earl of
Selkirk's silver plate. We notice it to observe that it was faith-
fully returned to his lordship in due form. We may here tack
on the first verse of an old ballad :-
“You have heard o' Paul Jones,
Have you not ? Have you not ?
And you’ve heard o' Paul Jones,
Have you not ?
He came to Selkirk Ha,
Did he not? did he not ?
&C., &c.
f Droog, a fortified hill or rock.
KANOJEE ANGRIA AND THE PIRATES. 139
the booty, which recounts this exploit. As its
elevation is 140 feet higher than Saint Paul’s,
it is seen from afar, and still retains the name
of Lady James’ Monument. So much for
Severndroog. In 1756 Admiral Watson
and Ilieut.-Colonel Clive, whose great name
appears in this history, captured Gheria, or
Viziadroog, 170 miles south of Bombay, and
seized Toolajee Angria with his wife and family,
and all the plunder, amounting to ten lakhs of
rupees, which he had taken from the East India.
Company.* A curious incident lately oc-
curred at Gheria, when some English visitors,
including, we believe, a late Governor of Bombay,
were confronted by a venerable native, who
gravely averred that he himself was a spectator
of this great action. This throws Washington’s
nurse completely into the shade.
We come now to speak of a painful subject,
TEIE ENGLISH PIRATE.
The English Government in Bombay had to deal
with all kinds of pirates—Somalee, Seedee, and
Sanganian; but worse than any of these, she had
to bring down her right arm on those of her own
* Low's Indian Navy, 1877.
140 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
flesh and blood who desecrated the name and the
honour of England on the Indian Ocean. The
Mahratta pirate was bad, the English worse,
for he had learned more and profited a great
deal less. The trade was new to the one and
hereditary to the other. Kidd and Evory and
Green are the names of some of these ruffians,
who committed robbery and murder on the high
seas, and the scope and duration of their crimes
far exceeded those of any individual attack on
life and property on land. Their sweep was
wide as the Indian Peninsula and adjacent seas,
and imperilled the existence of every English-
man and woman thereon, as well as the condi-
tion of future generations. Quick work, there-
fore, was made of their authors and abettors.
Ridd, who was never in Bombay, but not far
from it, was hung in chains at Tilbury, and
his goods confiscated to Greenwich Hospital.
Green, “afterwards hanged in Scotland,” says
Hamilton, noticing that he came on board his
ship “very much overtaken with drink.” Evory
fled to Barbadoes, and five of his accomplices
Were hanged. A Persian scholar* of this
period, whose works have been recently translated,
* Khafi Khan.
KANOJEE ANGRIA AND THE PIRATES. 141
lifts the veil from the horrors which accompanied
his capture of the big pilgrim ship Gunjee-Suwaee.
This mildest manner'd man who ever scuttled
ship or cut a throat was, of course, sent to Gehenna
by the Moslem, and to the hell of heated and
burning copper, one of the twenty-seven hells of
the Hindoos. The English pirate rarely reached
home with his ill-gotten plunder. Allan Ramsay
writes in 1722 :—
“Much dawted by the gods is he
Who to the Indian Main
Successful ploughs the wally sea,
And safe returns again.”
Not much fondled by gods or men was the
pirate in his native gaum. The finger was point-
ed at him as the man who had sold his soul to the
devil for as much gold as filled his boot. *
The English pirate was the principal cause of
Child’s war, which cost £440,000. Aurungzebe
would not see in those piratical acts anything
but the action of our accredited agents. Hence he
told Sir William Norris, our ambassador, if the
plunder was not redeemed, he knew the way he
came, and might go ‘‘ back again.”
England did not rest satisfied until she had
hunted out the last of her degenerate children
* Skipper's boots, Specially those of pirates in those days,
Were large.
142 BOOK, O’F BOMBAY,
and amply redeemed their follies by the great
part she took in .
THE POLICE OF THE INDIAN SEAS.
There is not one fact in Bombay history of
which we may feel more justly proud than the
imperishable services of the Indian Navy, from
the day that Hawkins stood before the Emperor
Jehangier at Agra in 1609 to the abolition of the
service in 1863, when its flag was hauled down
and it ceased to exist.
It is true that what we attempted we did not
always succeed in, but we ultimately attained the
object we had in view, which was no less than
giving a safe throughgate to the vessels of all
nations by making peaceable men of these wild
marauders of the sea. The suppression of piracy
and slavery on the coasts of Arabia, the Persian
Gulf, and Katty war is a history by itself, and that
history belongs to the Indian Navy. Why is it
to-day that the Indian Ocean is as safe for the ves-
sels of every flag as the Solent or the Medway ?
We may well enquire the reason why. And why
do men sleep on the way from Aden to Bombay,
for they did not always do so? It was that the
course initiated by the Government of Bombay
against the Mahratta pirates, by Oxenden and
KANOJEE ANGRIA AND THE PIRATEs. 143
his successors, was followed up by the brilliant
exploits of James, of Watson, and of Clive
against the Angrias until the pirates were driven
out for ever, and the entire sea left clear and un-
interrupted to all who chose to enter it. With-
out this, of what use would be your steam navi-
gation, your Suez Canal, and electric telegraph 2
With the pirates, Waghorn and the over-
land route would have been an idle dream.
Security was the first element ; speed the
second. -
THEIR CRUELTIES.
What men suffered and endured at the hands
of the pirates it were vain to enumerate. Much
is known, much more is unknown, and it is, per-
haps, as well it should be so for the credit of our
human nature. It is a blood-stained Book of
Martyrs at the best.—Sawbridge and his crew
tortured and put on shore at Aden to die of
thirst 5° Petit, a member of Council, leaping
from the burning ship which he defended to the
last, only to be carried off to Goojurat, where
he died a miserable death ;+ Rasalghur, near
Mahableshwur, was the prison-house of an Eng-
lish officer who was captured by Anandrao
* 1696. # 1684,
#44 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
while carrying despatches to the Court of
Directors.” º -
We need not, however, ransack the pages of
history. Our own time furnishes us with an
example. It seems but yesterday that a man who
bore on his body, like a “ crusader’s badge ºf
the marks of the pirates was alive. Captain
Grant, of Barholm, Kirkcudbright, commanded in
1820 the naval force of the Guikwar to put down
piracy, and on his way inland from Diu Head
was captured and imprisoned. He lay for two
months and seventeen days on the top of a moun-
tain in the Geer jungles. From a letter, dated
April, 1871, to General Sir George Le Grand
Jacob, we take the following :-‘‘My sufferings
during confinement were almost beyond endur-
ance, and I used to pray in the evening that I
might never see the morning. I had my boots
on my feet for the first month, not being able to
get them off for the wet. Severe fever, with
ague and inflammation of the liver, came on,
and with exposure to the open air drove me de-
lirious ; so when let go, I was found wandering
in the fields, covered with vermin from head to
foot. I can never forget the foregoing incidents,
* 1780. + Died 1874.
KANOJEE ANGRIA AND THE PIRATES. 145
though it is now upwards of fifty years since
they occurred.”
THE LAST OF TEIE ANGRIAS.
Meanwhile the Angrias at Gheria and Kolaba,
all these years, ate and drank, married wives,
and begat sons and daughters. “Very much
married,” as Artemus Ward would say ; the
last of them, in 1838, left five widows. Some of
their wives were of good mettle, and one of them,
about 1798, Sakoovurbaee, the wife of Jeysing,
performed a feat which for one hundred
years had defied all the power and ingenuity of
the Bombay Government. She took Kenery,
and the island would not have been wrested from
her, except by the foulest treachery. The com-
mander of Sindia’s forces at Gwalior came down
and offered to relieve her husband from prison
if she give up the fort. She did so, and Jeysing
was killed, and this heroine and her family put
in prison.
Then there was Amundubaee, who was like Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite ; the women of
these days fighting much better than the men.
She was the widow of Raghojee, “ the beloved,”
and besieged Kolaba and imprisoned her step-
son, Jeysing, and executed his chief adviser ;
19
146 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
fought bloody battles in person at Khundala and
Heerakot ; and at length in 1796, on hearing of
the destruction of her army, died of a broken
heart.
Such were some of the strong minded and strong
bodied women among the Angrias. The family
seem to have been a very quarrelsome set among
themselves, literally picking each other’s eyes out.
The dull monotony of their daily existence on
shore, for they never absolutely bartered away
their piratical instincts for the gifts of civilisa-
tion, was varied by sewing up their relations in
sacks, or hurling obstinate members of the family
to their last resting place down the steep cliffs of
Sagurghur. The reign of the last man, Raghojee,
1817 to 1838, was called Angrak, which, we un-
derstand, means Mars, an evil star for man and
beast in Hindostan. A posthumous child born
to him died in 1839, when the possessions of
Angria lapsed into the Kolaba Collectorate.
Alibagh is a fine mame, the “Garden of God,”
and placed amid a waste of salt marshes, with its
flowers, fruits, and aromatic herbs, ought to justify
the title. Opposite to it—you can almost walk
over at low tide—is the island rock of Kolaba.
The only pleasing episode we can recollect in its
KANOJEE ANGRIA AND THE PIRATES. 147
history is the visit in 1771 of James Forbes to
the then ruler, Raghojee Angria (1759 to 1793).
This man was very much beloved, and to him
we owe the number of trees in the landscape.
He was of a comely person and pleasing man-
ners, which were friendly, almost obsequious to
Englishmen. Forbes records that his palace,
treasury, and public buildings were in Kolaba,
and the gardens at Alibagh.
Like most seamen and descendants of seamen,
he was fond of horses, and possessed a magni-
ficent stud of Persian and Arab animals.”
THEIR OLD HAUNTS.
South of Bombay on the coast there were the
“Golden Fort,” the “ Fort of Victory,” the
“Ocean Fort,” and the “Garden of God.” Their
present state is described in the Ratnageeree
volume of the Bombay Gazetteer. The sea-eagle
builds its nest in a banian tree overhanging the
sea-wall of the picturesque old island of Severn-
droog. Gheria, or Viziadroog, has twenty-
seven bastions, which “over their whole length
are ruined by trees and evergreems.” The
cannon which we captured in 1756 appear to be
still lying there—250 rusty and unserviceable
* Oriental Memoirs.
148 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
pieces. Angria’s dock is choked with mud.
Sindoodroog, or Malwum, is a mere shell. Thirty-
two flags used to wave triumphantly over as
many bastions, where now a hoary and solitary
Adamsonia digitata rules supreme. The once
great arsenal of Kolaba is unapproachable
from the sea owing to outlying rocks. To the
north of Bombay the temple of Somnath (for
the pirates took possession of the holiest of
places) is now “ desecrated and defiled, and
scarcely distinguishable from the mass of ruins
which surround it.” Pirim, at the mouth of the
Gulf of Cambay, where seamen still make an
offering to the great local pirate, now reflects a
diopteric light; Kenery, that erst, and almost
within the memory of man, was the abode of
Angria, the enemy of legitimate commerce, has
been converted into its friend, and now points
the way to the mariner across the midnight
Waste of the kala pam.ee.
Man in these parts goeth forth to his labour
in the morning, but not now for purposes of
piracy.
CONCLUSION.
The Angrias were a stiff-necked race, born and
begotten of the sea, and full of its wild and
RANOJEE ANGRIA AND THE PIRATES, 149
restless energy. They were rocked to and fro
by its waves into hardihood and indomitable
pluck.
No memorable scene in this history rewards
the patience of the reader. We seem to hear
for ever the flapping of the great lateen sail,
and toil on from wreck to wreck amid floating
masses of burning ships and sinking mem. Not
one ray of family affection comes from these
embittered households; and a century of their
history does not offer one instance of filial
devotion to the living, such as that of Seevajee,”
or the veneration for the dead that was
exhibited at Wye and Panwell by the widow of
Nana Furnavese.f. In the dull and weary
annals of the Peshwas there is the great Poona
Durbar of 1790, when in the magnificent Gunesh
room of the Shunwar or Saturday Palace a hun-
dred dancing girls came forth amid fountains and
fragrant flowers to welcome our ambassador, Sir
Charles Malet i. In Seevajee's history there is
the barbaric splendour of his coronation. Angria
conducted his affairs by ruder methods. He
was never crowned, so he sits on a throne built
* Meadows Taylor works this well up in Tara.
f The Duke, Lord Valentia, and Lady Falkland all paid her
a Visit. *
4 Daniell's Great Picture.
|
l;0 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
up of plunder and sea-wrack. The story of the
Angria family goes a long way back, and comes
down to our own times.
The first man of the name that we meet with,
was a tindal in one of the gallivats of Seevajee.
The widow of the last ruler—her name is
Yashodee—still (1880) lives at Alibagh.
15]
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.
The issue of the tenth volume of the Bombay
Gazetteer is opportune to us, for the bulk of it is
devoted to this subject. When the British in 1818
took possession of Rutnageeree—the country from
Bankote to Vingorla, 160 miles in length, and
stretching 30 to 40 miles inland—it was in a
miserable condition. It was like the prophet’s
“valley of vision,” full of dry bones, the vultures
of previous times having left us only the skeleton
of a country. During the previous one hundred
and fifty years various birds of prey had been suck-
ing its blood. The Peshwa had done his work,
and Angria had done his work, and that black
eagle of the desert—Seevajee It was a country
without roads. That means nothing compara-
tively. It was a country without money, which
means a good deal when none of it passes between
man and man, and where a rupce in the hands of .
152 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
a tenant is a rare sight. It was a country where
a man wearing a decent turban, or ever so coarse
a dress, was an object of attraction. It had
reached that last stage in a people's degeneracy
when industry ceases to be a virtue—when the
bonds of society, or whatever you like to call it,
are broken up, and men take to the open country,
to feed on the roots of the earth and leaves of
trees, or wage war for existence. When Fletcher
of Salton, amid the gloom of “bondage days *
and hereditary jurisdiction, was asked what was
to be dome with the 100,000 beggars who then
roamed over his country, he replied —“ Sell
them as slaves.” But what are you to do with a
people where this has been already accomplished 2
The deed was done, in a kind of way, for without
bargain or sale the Khote and the Koonbee had
created between them a personal servitude for
the latter where “the only limit was the absolute
necessities of nature.”
“An impoverished, a dispirited, and a degraded
people,” “ little better than abject slaves.”
These are the words of the Government officials
of the day, and it is no wonder that they added
that the prospect was “almost hopeless.” Bajee
Rao in his last days seems to have begun to
realize the disagreeable truth that taxation had
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE. 153
exceeded burden-bearing limits. The ass lay
down, and to get it on its legs again the wise-
acres of that day suggested that £50,000 a year
should be doled out to the miserable wretches, so
that peradventure the beast of burden might be
cobbled into tax-giving capability. When this
experiment was going on we arrived. We then
took stock, and made an inventory of the legacy
that accrued to us. It consisted of a teak forest
sown by Kanojee Angria on the borders of the
Bankote river; Angria’s dock, silted up, at
Gheria ; an old Mahratta bridge at Rajapore ;
and 365 crazy forts—there was one for every day
in the year—through the loopholes of which we
were staring into utter vacancy, when lo and
behold, the Khote controversy was added to the
list, and soon worried out the lives of two
generations of civilians ! With such rotten
materials did we commence the work of regenera-
tion. The battle, however, had to be fought and
the victory won, and the history of political
economy in the restoration of moribund States
can scarcely furnish a greater triumph than is
exhibited in the present condition of that country
we now call Rutnageeree, the scene of the
Angrias’ exploits.
We began by covering the country with a net
20
154 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
work of 507 miles of roads. We opened up the
passes in the Sahyadree Hills for cart traffic. We
encouraged steam navigation, and as the coast
was rocky, we planted four light-houses on the
most dangerous points. We abolished the labour
cess, by which the Khote could exact, molens
volens, one day in eight of personal servitude.
We encouraged enlistment, until in 1879 we had
in the army 5,579 men, while 7,009 more were
receiving pensions amounting in the year to
£45,452. We sent out on their rounds 743
native policemen with a single European superin-
tendent. The office latterly has been nearly a
sinecure, for in 1878 of £2,659 alleged to have
been robbed, £1,583 was recovered. The
population in 60 years has risen from 462,651 to
I,019,136 until it literally overflows. They don’t
object to leave the country; 100,000 to 150,000
souls every year after the rice reaping finding
their way to Bombay, and returning before the
rains. Our cotton mills are full of them. The
acuteness and astuteness of the Konkanee Brah-
mins have become a proverb. In Bombay they
affect everything—law, police, medicine, Sans-
crit, mathematics. They are the Highlanders
of the Bombay Presidency, and every year this
Highland host so leavens our population that
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE. 155
every seventh man, woman, and child we meet
is a Rutnageerian. When we came there was little
or no trade. Between December, 1876, and
1)ecember, 1877, 150,000 tons of food-grains left
Bombay for Southern Mahratta ports, and the
sea trade of Rutnageeree has increased from
#104,484 in 1818 to £1,841,411 in 1878. The
revenue in 1832 was £117,829, in 1878
£230,470. The wages of labour are enhanced.
A labourer before 1860 received 1 to 2 annas a
day, now 3 to 4 ; and masons and carpenters,
then getting 3 to 6, are now paid 8 annas a
day. In such a hilly country the amount of
arable land, or rather land under tillage, is abso-
lutely marvellous. Of its entire superficies of
2,424,960 acres, 1,020,836 are under tillage. Add
to this, that there is a great air of comfort every-
where, and that the villages on the coast in
cleanliness compare favourably with any in India.
The men now wear sewed waistcoats, shoulder
cloths, shoes in dry and sandals in wet weather,
and deck themselves in turbans, while the
women are very neat in their dress and style of
wearing the hair. You recollect that Sir James
Mackintosh travelled in 1805 over 1,000 miles
of the Deccan without seeing an unwalled
village or a detached bungalow. Here there are
156 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
no walled villages. The people are neither
frightened of us nor of each other.
Thus has the pirate coast been reduced to
order by a systematized government, and its
race of spies and buccaneers been replaced by a
frugal and an industrious people.
“Where briers grew midst barren wilds,
Shall firs and myrtles spring.
And nature through its utmost bounds
Eternal praises sing.”
BOMBAY, 1750.
159
CHAPTER WII.
BOMBAY, 1750.*
GROSE'S ACCOUNT.
[This book is the property of Mr. Tyrrell Leith, barrister-at-law,
and it is by his courtesy that we have been enabled to present
this meagre rechaw.ffé of the Bombay portion of it to the public, as
well as a copy of Grose's Map of the City to some of our Bombay
Institutions. The book is so rare that we have seldom seen it
quoted, or referred to in any publication heretofore. Mr. Leith's
collection of books on the history of Western India, we make
bold to say, is the best selected of any that exists in the Presi-
dency at the present time, and certainly neither Mackintosh nor
Elphinstone had anything approaching to it..]
Now by the powers o' verse and prose !
Thou art a dainty chiel, O Grose !
Bwrms on Captain Grose.
IT may be as well at the outset to state that
the hero of this article is not the Captain Grose
* A Voyage to the East Indies. By M. Grose, London, 1772.
I60 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
of Burns. He has, however,’ some strong
affinities to him. The lines
“He’s ta'en the Antiquarian trade-
I think they call it,”
And
And, faith, he’ll prent it”
“A chiel’s amang ye takin notes,
fairly apply to him in Bombay. Our Grose was
a writer and covenanted servant of the East India
Company, a close observer and a man of much
intelligence ; and we think we will be able to
show that he has left on record the best account
that exists of Bombay as it was in the middle of
the last century.
WHEN GROSE LANDED
in Bombay, Poona had just become the capital
of the Mahrattas. Our territorial acquisitions in
Western India were no bigger than they were in
1665, when we took over the island from the
Portuguese, unless indeed we add to this a few
square miles of earth at Tellicherry. We were
still on the tenterhooks of uncertainty, for our
position was quite as precarious and critical as it
was in the end of the seventeenth century, when
Aurungzebe and Seevajee laid waste the Deccan and
Konkan plains. Those twin giants, the Gog and
BoMBAY, 1750. 161
Magog of our early Governors, had disappeared,
and were now no longer a menace to us ;
but the existence of Bombay as an English
settlement was still a matter of doubt in the
future. For that dominant power which Seevajee
had quickened into life was now in full swing at
Poona, Sattara, and Raighur. The right arm of
the Mahratta nation was as yet unbroken by the
defeat of Panipat—their Flodden field, where the
Afghans drove them from the north of India,
and inflicted a blow upon them from which they
never recovered.
We had enemies in all quarters—north, south,
and east, and even in the west; the sea, our
ancient and natural ally, whence alone we could
draw men and munitions of war, was covered by
the fleets of Angria, who had wrapped up in the
folds of his piratical dominion a wide extent of
country stretching away south from the mouth
of Bombay harbour. Moreover, the fall, of
Bassein in 1739 was an event of sinister import
to us, and added new dangers to our political
situation, for we were now hemmed in as we had
never been before. Bad as the Portuguese were
in Salsette, they were better neighbours for us
than the Mahrattas, who now, after sweeping over
the island, confronted us with their outposts on the
21 -
162 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
hill of Bandora. And this may be said, that weak
as Portugal was, so long as she held Salsette it
acted as a barrier between us and the enemy, and
broke the force of the mass that was pressing
down upon us from the Deccan hills.
Our readers will see that the outlook from the
bastions of Bombay Castle was at this time alto-
gether a dreary one ; for though the sum rose
then as it does now, there was this important
difference,—that there was not a peak or valley
in the wide panorama which it lighted up but
what was in the hands of the enemy. Kolaba,
Thull, Oorun, Caranja, Kurnala, Prabhul,
Matheran, Bhowmalang, with the Khundala
range ending in Rajmachee, with all the inter-
vening country and ten times as much beyond it,
with the islands of Henery, Kenery, Elephanta,
and Trombay, were governed or misgoverned by
the enemies of England.
The truth seems to be—and it was well under-
stood by those who then lived in Bombay, and
by those who lived out of it, who had studied the
subject—that we could not afford to quarrel, just
at this particular time, with either the Peshwa or
his great henchman Angria ; and though we did
mot turn our cheeks to the smiter, we had from
motives of expediency to allow their gibes and
BoMBAY, 1750. 163
jeers, and scoffs and taunts, to pass apparently
unnoticed. When we made a ditch round the
fort, they told us that they would soon fill it up
in a single night with their slippers. When they
seized a supply of our swords, they sent word to
us that they would not cut butter. Once we
went so far as to negotiate with Angria, and try
and buy him off, by an annual subsidy, an
attitude which looks like temporising. He asked
for twelve lakhs of rupees or £150,000 per
annum. That was what he estimated the worth
of his predatory commerce. But this policy had
one good effect, that it enabled us to gain time,
bide our time, recruit our marine, and strengthen
our fortification, which before this time was, be-
tween the bastions, of the mature of a garden-wall.
The destruction of Angria and the defeat of
Panipat came afterwards ; and it is not too
much to say that it was almost a miracle that
Bombay was not now swallowed up in the Mah-
ratta dominion of Western India—
A living prey
Unto their teeth,
And bloody cruelty.
Such was the political situation of Bombay when
our author landed here in the autumn of the
year of our Lord 1750. -
164 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
He came out in the Lord Anson, East India-
man, and had a voyage of five months, which
was considered a good one. There is no doubt,
we think, that he landed at our present Custom
House bunder, and if so he would be most con-
veniently placed for paying his respects to the
Governor. So at six in the evening he hied him
to Government House, as in duty bound. It
W3.S quite near, and you may still see the frame-
work of it within the Arsenal. The Governor
was affable and courteous, and Sams ceremonie
ASEED ME. GROSE TO SUPPER
that very evening. His name was William Wake,
and he was now completing the eighth year of his
reign, to be succeeded by a man better known
in history as the Honourable Richard Boarchier,
Esq. And here it may be as well to observe
that the hours of business at this time in Bom-
bay were from sunrise to 1 p.m., when its cares
and troubles were laid aside and our breeched
and wigged citizens, and our patched dames and
demoiselles, spent their time, like the little chil-
dren in France, in eating, drinking, and sleeping.
If the mauvais quart d'heure was about 12, the
time of universal satisfaction was 1 p.m., when
dinner was served. After this came the hookah,
BoMBAY, 1750. 165
the gurgling noise of which, sooth to say, had a
wonderfully soothing effect, and sent the guests
asleep. It is averred that the siesta was invi-
gorating, and that they rose like giants refresh-
ed, and sallied out to walk, ride, or drive on
such oxen-drawn vehicles as were then available
in the neighbourood of Bombay Green. Fortified
with the fresh sea-breeze along the Back Bay
sands, or a lounge on Mendham’s point, our
diners of 1 o’clock returned at 8 with renewed
appetite to attack the ghost of the feast, to which
there were added some piquant dishes with which
the cooks of those days no doubt found it their
interest to titillate the jaded palate. And if they
could not eat, they could drink. For Niebuhr
tells us they were nothing loth to grapple with
the strong wines of Portugal, the consumption
of which, he avers, contributed to swell the mor-
tuary returns. In addition to these, Grose
tells us of three drinks which now burst upon
the bibulous world of Bombay with astonishing
effect. The three viands which now divided pub-
lic attention were the spirit of Deer, the spirit
of Mutton, and the spirit of Goat, to such mar-
vellous ingenuity are men driven to invent new
names for liquors to quench their thirst. These
drinks were in great vogue, and the way they
166 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
got their names was this :—A haunch of venison,
a joint of mutton, or a quarter of goat was
thrown into the vat when the arrack was being
distilled, and while correcting its fiery nature,
imparted a new flavour which was considered
mighty fine. The blend of each of these spirits
was different ; every man had his favourite, some
the one, some the other, the deer, no doubt from
its wild gout, outrunning the other animal spirits
in the chase. We ourselves should rather object
to any one of them, but as matter of his-
tory this explains the consumption of ar-
rack, of which it is said the English were
the best customers of the best brands from
Goa. There could be at this supper only
A FEW LADIES,
as in 1739 there were only eight unmarried
ladies in the Bombay Presidency, twenty married
ladies, four to eight widows, and “ never more ”
than seven children. This last Malthusian state-
ment, even though seven is the complete number,
seems to us preposterous, and throws discredit
upon the entire statement. It is quite true that
Niebuhr was here for six months in 1764, and
tells us that during the whole time he was
here neither marriage nor baptism took place.
Bom BAY, 1750. 167
But even this statement does not warrant us, on
the vital statistics of Bombay at any period, ut-
tering the cry of Poe's raven—“Never more P’
But we are now on safer ground. All the
ladies wore patches. At least Mrs. King, the
Chief's wife, of Angengo, did, and Angengo, if
we recollect rightly, was then a more lucrative
post than Bombay. Here it was that Orme the
historian was born, and Eliza Draper; so we
imitate Sterne in asking pardon of the reader for
the “digression.” But to the patches. Grose
records that at a reception some leading natives
condoled with Mr. King on his wife’s distemper,
and hoped that there would be no more breaking
out of boils and blains ! At this supper party
there could be no lack of
SUBJECTS OF CONVERSATION.
The Scotch Rebellion was already an extinct
volcano, and Grose does not notice the Scotch
unless to call attention to the fact that the
Deccany tat resembles those shaggy brutes that
are reared on the mountains of Scotland. The
peace of Aix-la-Chapelle is not once named.
People do not talk statecraft after dinner, much
less after supper; so Grose amuses us with the
168 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
way he dodged the sea-sickness by going on board
the Lord Anson with an empty stomach. No
doubt everybody having supped, resolved to try
the same on going home, the sea moaning bode-
fully all the time on the black rocks outside the
big dining-room. Grose was told of two fearful
bugbears to new comers, the Berbiers and the
Mordechino, but was consoled by the fact that
the doctors of Bombay were now a very differ-
ent lot from the rusty razors of past times.
The health of the city was greatly improved,
for which we had very much to thank the
doctors. j
To have good doctors you must pay them well.
This is an axiom that cannot be disputed, so
Grose avers that the small allowances granted to
surgeons in the early days of Bombay W3.S 8,
principal reason why its mortality had become a
byeword in Europe, where Bombay was termed
the grave of Englishmen. He tells us that
Governor Phipps (1720 to 1728), anxious to curry
favour with his masters at home inaugurated
a number of reductions, and among others in the
Bombay Marine. On examining a schedule of
salaries, he observed the surgeon’s salary put
down at Rs. 42 per mensem. “O ho! there
must be some mistake here; the figures are trans-
BoMBAY, 1750. 169
posed.” And sure enough, he altered them to
Rs. 24.3%
Grose givesus the particulars of a race of pigmies
in the Carnatic. Two specimens had been sent by
one Wencajee trading in those parts to Robert
Horne, Governor (1734-39), and Captain Boag
was commissioned to bring them up to Bombay.
The creatures were two feet high, were without
hair, sallow white in colour, and walked erect.
They were melancholy, had a rational sense of
their captivity, and many human actions. They
made their own beds, and the joints of their
legs were not re-entering like monkeys, but
salient like those of men. The sea air did not
* Shortly before this period there was considerable grumbling
among the writers of the Company, and in 1739 they sent home
a representation that their income was insufficient, to defray
their expenses accompanied by, the following schedule to show
that their living could not be “done for less.”
Calculation of Monthly Bombay Eacpenses.
g RS. Qrs.
Qne fowl per diem at 1 q1...6 p., each ... . . 9 3
One chicken or fish and rice 14 p. each . 5 1
Flour, pepper, mustard, &c. .. e e . 0 2
Greens .. e & * * tº tº . 0 3
3 rolls per diem, 2 p. each.. ... 2 1
Wine and Punch, R.S. 2 each . 15 0
hee & gº tº gº g: g: & 9 tº e . 0 3
Oil and Candles tº º * e * g. . 4 ()
Wood 1,200 billets Rs. 2-2 por mille . 3 ()
Tea half cally . . • gº & & s & . 1 2
; or sugar-candy . 2 2
Milk * - * * as gº tº e . 0 3
Butter, 2 lbs., Re. 1 per lb. . 2 0
Water-bearer.. e ºf & ſº 0 2
R.S. 48 2
The drink and oil bill mean late hours, for though the bill is small,
those items form a large proportion of the gross expenditure.
22
170 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
agree with them: the female sickened and died,
and the male became inconsolable and died also.
Boag buried them at sea. Horne, like many
men, was fond of specimens, and asked the
captain why he did not preserve them in spirits,
who replied bluntly that he never thought of it.
So this new race perished on their way to
Bombay ; for though Governor Horne wrote to
Vencajee to get another pair, the pigmies would
not be coaxed out of their lair, but remain im-
penetrably fixed in their native jungles.
THE GOVERNMENT HOUSE,%
where Grose took his supper, is still to the
fore, and must be the oldest house in Bom-
bay. It is marked “Governor’s House” in
his map of Bombay, and now faces you as
you enter the gate of the Bombay Arsenal,
* When the English took possession of this island, they found,
in that part of it which chiefly commands the harbour, an old
fortified house, the residence of the Portuguese Governor, and
though this house might, have served for other valuable uses,
they were tempted to make of it the Centre house of the castle
which they built round it. It is, however, impossible to con-
ceive in every sense a more incommodious structure, and the
same or perhaps less Cost than the reparations and additions
have stood in to the Company would have built a much better
mansion new from the ground. For the false economy of pre-
serving this old piece of building, which need only to have been
demolished or thrown away, had such effect that it hindered the
English not only from consulting a more commanding position to
the harbour which is that of Mendham's point, but made them
blind to the disadvantage of the Fort built round it, being over-
looked by an eminence near it called Dungharee point, on which
there is only a small untenable little fort of no defence which
serves now for the town prison for debtors or criminals.-GROSE.
BoMBAY, 1750. 171
with a board upon it, on which is printed
the prosaic inscription “Pattern Room.” In
the paper on Gerald Aungier, we hazarded
the conjecture that the “four-square house ’’ we
took over from the Portuguese was still extant,
though the moderns have piled an upper storey
on its bomb-proof roof. The discovery of this
map of Grose sets the question at rest. This
venerable relic still exists, and can never cease
to be of interest to every man who is proud of
his city and curious of its early history. Here
the first twenty Governors, from Aungier to
Hornby, had their abode, Oxenden and Child
in the seventeeth century, and such magnates
as Boone, Bourchier, and Crommelin in the
eighteenth. Not all wassail and wine, for here,
no doubt, Cooke was disgraced, Child died, and
here in 1734, Robert Cowan received his notice
to quit the service of the East India Company,
and not very far off within the four bastions and
curtain of Bombay Castle, some of the most
momentous scenes of Bombay history have taken
place.
We are sure our fellow-citizens will join
in the wish that such a venerable relic
should be carefully preserved. It may, and
172 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
it may not. The spirit of improvement is abroad;
and not very far off.
So great is the rage for improvement now-a-
days, that we think it is highly probable that some
one full of bran-new ideas will remove it as an
6XCI’éSCCIOCC.
The Castle, as our readers are aware, is a
quadrangle, and the bastion facing Mody Bay
was called Tank Bastion. Not for the reason
that it was near the big tank which faces the
Mint, but because there is a tank of water within
the bastion itself. Here is also one of the oldest
sculptured works in Bombay. It may indeed be
Portuguese and before our advent. This is
A COLOSSAL SUNDIAL,
ten feet high, with much grotesque carving, heads
of men, monsters, and animals, intermingled with
leaves, towering high above the dial-face. The
visitor will observe that the disc looks out sea-
ward. Indeed, as you stand on the bastion the
face cannot be observed without a considerable
craming of the neck, and the angle seems, exact-
ly the same as that of the clock-face of the
Arsenal observatory, to catch the eye of the mari-
ner on entering the harbour. The gnomon is
gone, but even if a mew one were fixed in it, it could
BoMBAY, 1750. & 173
be of no use, for the roof of some buildings ob-
struct the view of it from the sea. The hours are
now as distinctly marked as on the day that they
were cut in the stone, and in the rim or border
which surrounds it a seed of the peepul tree
having found a matrix, projects a branch covered
with big leaves, which wave to and fro in the
breeze over the dial-plate, as if in mockery of
time and the strongest efforts of man to measure
it.
The time that we have spent with Grose in
THE BOMBAY OF 1750
leaves no doubt in our mind that it was a dirty,
uncomfortable, exasperating kind of place. There
is much to interest one, however, particularly a
new arrival. We are shown the Breach, now the
Wellard, and which has been long known as
HORNBY'S VELLARD.
[Dr. Buist seems to have been aware that the
Wellard was built before Hornby’s Governorship,
for he tells us in an article on the Geology of
Bombay which is published in the transactions.
of the Bombay Geographical Society Vol. X.,
1852, that the embankment between Love
Grove and Mahaluxmi was completed “about a
*
174 Book OF BOMBAY.
hundred years before,” i.e. 1752, which, it is
said, has contributed much to the improved health
of the place.] It has already cost £150,000.
We had always understood that this was the
special work of Governor Hornby, Governor
1771-84, and indeed that this was the last work
he executed. But here it is in a book published
in 1772, a second edition, and which was certain-
ly written ere Hornby could have done anything
to it as Governor. He may, however, have given
the finishing touch to it. But let us look at
THE FORT.
The walls appear very much as they are laid down
in Murray’s Guide-book map of 1857, ere
the levelling process had commenced. Barring
Elphinstone Circle, the configuration of the
business part of the town, its main streets
and lines of communication, are very much in
appearance what they are now in 1882. In a
picture in this book taken from about the
site of the Town Hall, we are glad to re-
new acquaintance with our old friend, the Cathe-
dral. It is the same, and not the same. Being
shorn of the upper portion of the tower where
the clock is, it looks stunted in the picture, what
Dr. Chalmers to an agricultural friend called “a
BoMBAY, 1750. 175
church of the short-horned breed.” It looks
abashed and less crowded than it now is, and
altogether in a lonely and noiseless neighbour-
hood.
We can aver that the same tree, a ficus, which
still overshadows the fountain between the Circle
and the Cathedral, where so many men and
beasts slake their thirst and find a shelter from
the moon-day sun, is there. On the site of Sas-
soon’s Buildings (Kemp's) are two double-
storeyed houses, the upper storey having a veran-
dah the exact counterpart of that which you
may still see in the old Secretariat, Apollo-
street, and which may be accepted as the type of
the houses which were being erected about this
time. In this neighbourhood, and occupying as
it were the rim of the Bombay Green, were the
houses of the leading Government servants and
merchants, but mostly one-storeyed bungalows,
as the want of room had not begun to tell, the
best proof of which is that on looking up Church
Gate-street we can see that the great block now
opposite Mrs. Take’s shop, extending for two
or three hundred yards up our present Hornby-
row, is covered with cocoanut-trees. That quarter
within the Fort walls occupied by what Grose
calls the black population—we mean what is
176 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
embraced between Hornby-row and Mody
Khan-street and the Circle, and the outlet to
the north of Bazaar-street on your way to the
Boree-bunder station, where the old Bazaar-gate
stood—seems as densely peopled as now. The
population of the island was then about 100,000.
Not only so, but Apollo and Marine-streets,
Church Gate-street, Hummum-street, Medows-
street in all its integrity under another name
which we do not know, as General Medows’
Governorship was so late as 1788 to 1790, and
even the lanes, such as Ash, Dean, Rope Walk,
and others, debouching on our now Rampart-
row, are extant; while the block on which the
Oriental Bank now stands, and which some of
our readers will remember as the site of Trea-
cher’s shop, stands out like a promontory parallel
with the walls of the town. There is now a
house, two-storeyed, and as the phrase goes, self-
contained, at the end of Medows-street, nearly
opposite the old Bombay Gazette office, which
represents a style of this date (and another of a
similar character may be seen next to the old
Court House, in Apollo-street), and which a
Glasgow reader would recognise as an exact
copy of the buildings in Virginia-street, belong-
ing to the same period. It must have been, we
BoMBAY, 1750. 177
think, the residence of some European magnate
who courted the sea-breeze on this outskirt of
the Fort; and the walls of some portion of the
Convent School and Chapel in the same street
are so old that you need not be afraid to carry
them back to a time anterior to the English oc-
cupation. As for Cowasſee Patel-street, Parsee
Bazaar-street and Mody Khan-street, there are
no doubt houses there, either inhabited or in
ruins, as old as Bombay Castle.
There was scarcely at this time in all Colaba a
single building except three tombs (one of which
at all events remains) in the middle of the island,
which were always kept whitewashed as a guide to
vessels entering the harbour; and at the extreme
end, on a small eminence, a look-out house (he
does not say a light-house) for ships. The whole
of Colaba, he tells us, was let in 1750 for grazing
at £20 or Rs. 200 per annum. We are afraid we
must bring Mendham’s Burying-ground nearer
the Fort walls than the Bandstand and Cooper-
age, the site usually assigned to it. The portico
of St. Andrew’s Kirk as it now stands (1882)
would be, we estimate, about 200 feet from the
gateway of Mendham’s Burying-ground, which
was a parallelogram apparently about 500 feet
long and 250 broad, and so near the sea (you
23
178 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
must make allowance for reclaimed land) that at
high tide on walking along the beach you would,
as in the case of Colaba churchyard, require to
elbow your way round the corner between the
sea and the cemetery walls. We know that Mend-
harn’s Burying-ground was cleared away in
1760, and Sonapore opened at the same time.
Grose's map lays down Mendham, which is evi-
dence in itself that it was drawn before 1760.
The banian-trees near the Young Men’s Chris-
tian Institute are no doubt exuberant for obvious
reasons. We must not omit that in our coup
d’oeil past the Cathedral, we descry at the terminus
of Church Gate-street the gate itself, turreted
(near the Floral Fountain), and with perhaps a
sleeping-room above, also a side door or “needle-
eye ’’ for late men who were on the wandergang
and required the pass or word of the night during
the small hours. At this period, and long before
it, there must have been many residences, country-
houses of rich Portuguese and others, at
|Mazagon. Of what may be termed the new
Native Town, north of the Esplanade, the eastern
part, say about the present Jumma Musjid, com-
prehending the Market, Mandvee, Oomerkharree
and Bhooleshwar districts are much older than
the western, i.e., Dhobee-talao; Girgaum, Chow-
BoMBAY, 1750. 179
pattee and Khetwadee, which latter appear as a
mass of cocoanut-gardens, so late as a map of
1806. It is astonishing how even now the cocoa-
nut seems to swallow up all the buildings in this
last-named district in a mass of greenery. For
look at it from Cumbala Hill or the new road on
Malabar Hill, in the month of May when every
green herb without water is here withered up,
and this is the case. Much more from the
summit of the Clock Tower; and Mr. Geary
mentioned in the account of his balloon ascent,
that at an altitude of several thousand feet, almost
everything of Bombay disappeared except the
docks and the coco trees, in fact, I think he hinted
that our abode for this very reason might be
called the “Green Isle.” Speaking of
THE DOCK YARD
we may as well accompany Mr. Grose to it. He
calls it the Marine Yard, and to-day we enter it by
the same big gateway opposite the old CourtHouse,
the ground being still devoted to the same purpose
as in 1750. A crowd of new buildings have since
sprung up with which we do not at present concern
ourselves. The original Dry Dock of Bombay still
exists in all its integrity. It astonished not only
Grose but Niebuhr, who notes that two ships
180 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
could be repaired in it at one time. Though
ship-building has much outgrown the dimensions
of this dock, it can still accommodate two craft
of considerable burthen at once, and to our hazy
notions of hydraulic engineering, seems a
splendid piece of mason work, as good to-day
apparently as it was 150 years ago. The newer
dock nearer the Sailors’ Home, and lying in
juxta position and parallel with this, does not at
all events by way of contrast offer anything
favourable. Outside of these, and we now ap-
proach the utmost limit in this direction of the
Bombay fortification seawards, is a salient angle
covered by a most venerable relic of antiquity,
and which you ascend by stairs much the worse
for the wear. This is no less than the Royal
Bastion of Bombay, on which no doubt much
bunting and gunpowder were expended in former
generations. The ground sounds hollow under
your feet, for lascars of sorts or marine men and
women seem to have taken up their abode in
Troglodyte fashion within the vaults beneath.
On descending you observe an arch as old look-
ing as the hills, which leads through a tunnel to
the other and shore side of this bastion and great
sea-wall. Here Grose no doubt heard the waves
of the Indian Ocean dashing at his feet, and saw
BoMBAY, l750. 181
before him the melancholy main, with, in one
direction, no land intervening between him and
the coast of Africa. This bastion to a favoured
few at 6 p.m. must have supplied in 1750 the
place of the Apollo-bunder, and a more eligible
spot for enjoying the sea-breeze and a view of
the harbour we cannot imagine.
CARTOGRAPHY OF BOMBAY.
Dr. Fryer’s map is the earliest, say, about
1675, though the book which bears his name was
published later. Mahim woods and the fishing-
stakes in the harbour are laid down precisely
where they are at present (1882). “Only one
Tower of Silence recently built.” Ovington
gives a plan of the citadel in 1668, the main
lines of which may still be traced and identified.
Baldaeus, a Dutch clergyman, has good plans
and pictures of the castle about the same date.
Grose's map is simply invaluable, though it is
only of what is within the walls (Mendham ex-
cepted), for every street is laid down, and it is
accompanied by a scale of feet. Niebuhr's map
of the Island of Bombay (1764) has all the forts
from Reeva and Sion to Mazagon and Dungaree,
and the castle, on the tank bastion of which, he
182 , BOOK OF BOMBAY.
flies the flag of the English nation. We have
inspected a hand-made map of 1806 (Mackin'
tosh's time), a most elaborate performance : the
Government House near the Cathedral, brilliantly
coloured, and the new town, that is, near the
Crawford Market, already covering a vast amount
of space. Our readers have observed two pro-
montories on looking out from the Wellard. They
have tombs on them. The name of the left-hand
one is Bawa Hajee ; the right Beebee Hajeen.
Of maps, the worst is that which accompanies
Murray’s Hand-book, 1881, and which ought
to be the best. We ask the reader to look
at it. There are about three dozen names
to illustrate 400 pages of letter-press, and the
map is a miserable specimen of the engraver’s
art, and falls far behind the plan of Bombay
published in the same book in the edition of
1857. The best map of the Island of Bombay,
both for accuracy and execution, was printed in
London in 1843, and represents the city and
island in 1812-16, the population being then
243,000. This map of Thomas Dickenson is a
perfect chef d’ewvre. Major Jervis’ signature is
at the foot, with the picture of a tortoise as a
tail-piece, and the motto Paulatim. No need
for apology. Slow but sure, this is a perfect
BoMBAY, 1750. - 183
gem of the engraver’s art, and can never be
excelled. The largest map that we have seen,
with all the docks and reclamations up to 1881,
is in Messrs. W. and A. Graham's office, and
was constructed for that firm. It covers a side
of a large room, and resembles Colonel Laugh-
ton’s great masterpieces of Revenue Survey in
this, that spread out on the ground, it would
require one to take off his shoes, and crawl,
spider-like, over the surface for days and nights
together, with occasional intervals for refresh-
ment.
In 1750 we do not doubt that most of the
houses and streets round Mombadevee and Py-
dhonee, i.e., Copper-Smiths' Bazaar, &c., were
in existence. As for Malabar Hill and Breach
Candy at this time, we may leave their bun-
galows as not either in esse or in posse, except
the Parsee ones on the left, half way up Malabar
Hill, and possibly one or two situated on the
slope of the hill near the foot of the Seeree road,
now cut away by the Back Bay Reclamation, and
one of which was occupied by Arthur Wellesley
in 1803. Belvedere, near the beach at Mazagon,
was inhabited shortly after this time by Daniel
Draper of “Eliza” celebrity; but so late as 1812
184, BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Colonel Dickinson gives only two bungalows on
Breach Candy—the Beehive and the Retreat,
the last of which under the name of the Wilder-
mess, as we take it, has been known to our
readers for a great many years. On Malabar
Hill in 1812-16 there is not a single bungalow
in Colonel Dickinson’s map, and we believe that
the one occupied by the Municipal Commissioner
was the oldest, having been erected about 1830.
THE TOWERS OF SILENCE.
Niebuhr only mentions one in 1764, as Fryer
does in 1675. Our author (1750) only mentions
one, and gives a picture of it. He says it is
25 feet in diameter and 12 feet high. He was
told that if anybody looked into it, he was sure
to die. He went, nevertheless, but a Parsee told
him to desist, otherwise he should not long
survive his idle curiosity. Niebuhr tells us
why the Towers of Silence are closed against
strangers—
“cet edifice est actuellement,
formé depuis qu a ce qu'on
raconté une jeune et belle fille
qui etait morte forte subitement
et enterreó tout de suite, avait
requ encore une visite de son
aimant dans ce lieu funebre.”—Arabic.
BoMBAY, 1750. 185
FIRST PARSEE IN EUROPE.
Our readers will recollect that Briggs, in his
book on the Parsees, states that Maniar, a Parsee,
accompanied by Hurriman, a Hindu, visited
England in 1781 as agents of Bajee Rao Peshwa
of Poona. They were guests of Edmund Burke at
Beaconsfield, and Briggs considers it the earliest
visit of a Parsee to England on record. This
book, published in 1772, records one still earlier.
Grose’s words are “ Nowrojee Rustomjee, who
was here in England, and whose family was of the
greatest consideration among those people, de-
duced his descent from the Kings of Persia.”
No doubt ; but it is his descent upon England we
are noticing at present.
A PLUCKY WOMAN.
A Ranee, whose son had been killed in battle
by the first Bajee Rao, and who was so powerful
as to be able to raise 5,000 horse, sent him a
challenge, which Bajee Rao declined in the follow-
ing characteristic manner. The stake, he said,
was not equal, for though she might gain immor-
tal reputation by conquering Bajee Rao, he could
not possibly gain any by conquering a woman. .
24
l86 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
ELEPHANTA.
He takes the condition of the caves as proof
positive that no earthquakes of any consequence
have visited this district within the historic
period. He is not so happy in elucidating the
meaning of the sculptured group, so familiar to
us all, where Sheeva takes hold of the child.
Where he sees the judgment of Solomon, Dr.
Wilson descries a pourtrayal of the infanticide
of India, that dark shadow of the saddest crime
that ever afflicted humanity,
Here is
HIS PORTRAIT OF KANOJEE ANGRIA,
the founder of the family. He was a well-set,
corpulent man, rather blacker than commonly the
Deccanees are, full-faced, with a sparkling eye
and stern countenance. He was very severe in
his commands and exact in punishing; otherwise
liberal to his officers and soldiers, with whom he
effected a sort of military frankness, not to say
familiarity. He was too, like the Mahrattas, not
very careful of keeping faith, and excused the
making any peace with him on which it was fore-
known that no reliance could be had. His gener-
BOMBAY 1750. 187
al appearance was thus quite the opposite
of Seevajee, who was a fair, lean, and wiry
man. Of
RAIGHUR
Grose heard fearful accounts. Caernarvon and
Dunstaffnage were nothing to it. He asserts that
it grew as much grain as the garrison required.
There was a great mystery in those days about
Raighur, and this was, no doubt, one of the in-
ventions of the enemy to make Bombay shake in
its shoes; for our readers are aware that the top
of Raighur is a very narrow superficies compara-
tively, and was crowded with buildings. He
relates a story of which we think Seevajee must be
the hero. He says it was the Maharajah ; but
such stories, when they are good, are passed
on from age to age. It appears that there was
a sorceress on the hill, and he resolved to put
her to death, but had the curiosity to see her
first. The woman accordingly appeared. “She
was about forty, very corpulent, and not
of an ill presence.” Why doesn’t he say at
once she was fair, fat, and forty 2 He asked
her sternly if she knew why he had sent for
her, to which she replied that she knew he
v s going to put her to death. “I hope,” she
188 BOOK OT BOMBAY,
said, “for your own sake you will allow me to
give you a salutary Warning.” Curiosity, or a
belief in witchcraft, induced him to comply, when
she ordered a cock and a hen to be brought before
her into the royal presence. “The cock was set
down on the ground, full of life and spirit , then
taking the hen, she desired the Raja, to mark the
consequences. At these words she wrung the
head of the hen off, when at the same time the
cock, though untouched by any one, imitating
all the convulsions and agonies of its death
accompanied the hem in it.” “This, Sir,” said
she to the Rajah determinately, “remember
to be a type of your fate and mine.” Hence-
forth he was bound up in the bundle of
life with her, and it is needless to say the witch
was provided for, had a pension ever after-
wards, and a palanquin she could call her
OWIOl.
BULLION AND EXCHANGE.
As for exchange it was 2s. 6d. ; and Grose
says “The East Indies is a bottomless pit for
bullion, which can never circulate back to Europe,
and when bullion fails trade must cease,”—which
are nearly the very words that Bernier uttered a
BoMBAY, 1750. 189
century before. In bills he records only one
transaction, but as it is of an abnormal
character, we are tempted to give it. A
jogee came into Ajmere and presented a bill
of exchange for Rs. 2,000 to the Governor
drawn payable to the bearer by the god
Ram. The Governor told him with a laugh
that he was an impostor, and he went all
round the town, but everybody received him
with scoff, and said that it was a bad bill.
At length a rich oilman devoutly accepted it,
and paid the amount. The fakir immediately left
the town, and fulminated a curse of leprosy upon
all the inhabitants of Ajmere for twelve years,
which immediately took effect. We need not add
that the oilman was excepted from the ban, and
that the fakir took the proceeds of the bill with
him.
NATIVE CHARACTER.
We have on a former occasion alluded to
the settlement of the Bania caste in Bom-
bay under Gerald Aungier, a race which has
contributed very much to its aggrandise-
ment. But strange to say, almost every
writer has described them as of surpassing
greed. Dr. Fryer, otherwise a most im-
190 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
partial traveller, opens the vials of his wrath
on their head, and says that the fleas and
the Banias are the vermin of India, and that
they are a mass of sordidness ; that they are
blood-suckers, horse-leeches, cheats, liars, and
dissemblers. Grose has something to say which
is worthy of note. He says that he has read
all that has been said about them, and he
thinks that their probity in Surat is equal
to that of the European, and his belief is
that the bad character given to them must
be understood as only applicable to the petty
under-dealers among them. An English cap-
tain would come ashore with the invoices,
musters, and samples of his cargo, and
after striking a bargain the cash—£20,000 or
#30,000—would be paid down to him on the
mail, with no further trouble to him. What
he means to say is that the better classes are
good business men and not addicted to sharp
practice.
There are, however, occasional glimpses in
which we may see character higher than this; how
near it approaches generosity and beneficence,
we leave each reader to determine for himself.
The instance Grose cites we give in a foot-
BoMBAY, 1750. 191
note.* The story in this conjunction, though the
resemblance does not go further than that there
was a European on the one side and a native on
the other, must occur to the reader of Malcolm
in his errant days. But the most memorable in-
stance is that which is cited by Mountstuart
Elphinstone. It apparently fell within his own
knowledge, and as such illustrates a pleasing
branch of Indian ethics which we would fain
hope is not yet extinct.t
MALABAR HILL.
About the year 1735 there came to Bombay a
preacher who made a prodigious sensation. He
* “Don Antonio de Sylva Figueroa, Vice-Admiral, on receiving
an order from the Viceroy of Portugal to equip a squadron for
sea, found himself utterly unable to furnish the requisite ad-
vances to which the duty of his post obliged him. This naturally
made him uneasy, and melancholy, which being observed by his
mistress, who with some difficulty wrung the cause of it from
him, she left him abruptly, and in a manner that made him con-
clude she was, in the style of that SQrt of woman, going to add her
desertion to that of fortune, and which would not have been the
least of his afflictions; but he was soon surprised at her return
with a casket of jewels and gold to the amount of near three
thousand pounds, being more than he wanted, and which she, with
very good grace, obliged him to take as a mark of her affection.
This piece of generosity, from its being 80 uncommon, made the
more noise, and reaching the ears of the late King John of Portu-
gal, it affected him so that by the next ship he sent out letters of
legitimation to the Admiral's son by that dancer.”—Grose.
f “A perfectly authentic instance might be mentioned, of an
English gentleman in a high station in Bengal, who was dis-
missed, and aftewards reduced to great temporary difficulties
in his own country; a native of rank, to whom he had been kind,
supplied him, when in these circumstances, with upwards of
£10,000, of which he would not accept repayment, and for which
he could expect no possible return. This generous friend was a
Maharatta Brahmin, a race, of all others, who have least
sympathy with people of other castes, and who are most harden-
ed and corrupted by power.”—Elphinstone.
In a view of Bombay a little after this period we find in
f
192 BOOK OF BOMBATV.
was a jogee or fakir, and had been to Tibet,
China—yea, to Tartary. Far-away fowls have
Niebuhr, the father of tho historian Who was here in 1764, and to
whose memory Palgrave dedicates his book on Arabia, what is
wanting in Grose. Between the two we need not be at a loss.
That the population was 140,000, and had doubled itself in twenty
years ; that the old Government House on the Sea side was
wn viewa! chateaua de pew de consequence; that there was the
most abundant toleration are facts expatiated on by both these
writers, Some of Niebuhr's Small facts are interesting—that he
met some Greeks settled in Bombay ; that the English wear tight
clothes; that the houses have tiled roofs ; that Fº foreign-
ers do not make much in commerce ; that the highest military
officer, who is also a member of Council, has, Qnly the title of
Major; that there are many Polish, Swiss, Dutch, and German
officers in our Indian Army ; that there is only, one clergyman for
the whole of Western India, the minister of Bombay, who does
duty at Surat, Angengo, and Tellicherry, and that when he dies,
the faithful must wait until Word is sent home and another comes
out; that the Europeans in Bombay were a non-marrying, rage,
for neither marriage nor baptism took place when he was in the
island ; that the Pope had sent out a Bishop of Bombay, but the
Governor announced that there Was no need of an ecclesiastic
with such a high title ; that the African slaves owned by Eng-
lishmen and others were all Roman Catholics, and that the
church at Parel was already a magnificent Sculle a mamger and
dancing-room. From Grose we learn that the island was divi-
ded into three Roman Catholic parishes : Bombay, Mahim,
Salvaçam, the churches of which are governed by any nation but
the Portuguese. He also informs us that there was a public
flºº at Parel, and that there wºre European deserters in the
eet of Angria, and that—mvirabile dictwº f-some Englishmen
chewed betel-nut, and finally—
Il est permis, a tous de faire
commerce depuis le President d'un
etablissement jusq’u au moindre clerc.
and
Les Indiens sont bien la nation
la plus tolerante de l’ univers
Car dans quels pais de l’Europe
permettoit on a gens d'une
autre religion de precher
ouvertement contre celle quiest
la dominante dans le pais !
- * Satire on the state of religious toleration in Europe
in 1764.
Love-grove.—Maria Graham, in 1814 tells us the romantic story
of the two lovers. We have given their names. The name of
Love-grove is, no doubt, due to this incident. We understand
that Vellard is a Portuguese word for, causeway. The lovers
were Muslim, but both Muslim and Hindoo pay great venera-
tion to these tombs.
BoMBAY, 1750. t 193
bonnie feathers ; so the Bombay folks took to
him amazingly. His raiment was scant, and his
hair was long.
Mahmood Begurra of Ahmedabad, the Blue
Beard of Indian history, could twist his mous-
taches over his head, or tie them under his chin.
But this man's hair was so long that it reached
down to his heels, and to prevent it trailing on
the ground, he doubled it up again to the crown
of his head. Here the force of nature could no
further go, so it was wreathed in rolls, and rose
in a russet spire, into which colour it had been
sunburnt from its original black. He made a
pile of earth on the shore between the Walk-
eshwur Pagoda and the sea. He surrounded the
pile with faggots, and after setting them on fire,
he stood up within the blazing circle and
preached from the midst of the flames. The effect
was marvellous, and a perfect bursat of rupees
was the result.
The little brownish-yellow pagoda you descry
from the Malabar Point grounds, on the sea-shore,
is very picturesque and owes its existence to this
fervid preacher. The ground hereabout seems to
have a horrible fascination for devotees, for our
readers will recollect that about a dozen years
ago a fakir built himself up in a square piece of
25
194 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
masonry, out of which nothing would tempt him
to come.
Grose is enthusiastic on the scenery of Malabar
Hill, and notices the trees on the way to the Point,
with their branches twisted by the wind at right
angles and all in one direction. They give one
an idea, he says, of the temple-groves so often
pictured by the ancients. We are glad to meet
with these old friends in 1750.
It is Mackintosh, we think, who states that
Gray, the author of the Elegy, was the first, or
among the first, who in his letters expatiated
with exquisite taste on the pleasure derivable from
the contemplation of fine scenery. Mackintosh,
we daresay, never saw this book. Had he done
so, he would have seen described at his own doors
a scene which evoked this earlier notice; and as
it has more than a local interest, we give Grose’s
memorable words, which will receive commenda-
tion as long as there is an eye or a mind to
appreciate the beautiful in nature:—“On the sea-
side stands the Gentoo Pagoda. The other three
sides are surrounded with trees that form an
amphitheatre on the slopes of the hill towards it,
than which no prospect that I ever saw or can
conceive forms a more agreeably wild landscape.”
So say we all of us.
THE BOOK OF GOMBR00N,
1752–53,
197
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BOOK OF GOMBROON, 1752-53.
A mirror wherein passed to and fro the images of the ancient
days.-Chaldee Manuscript. g
THE Book of Gombroon has lain in Bombay
for one hundred and twenty years ; and it is
almost in perfect condition and legible, thanks
to the papermaker, the ink with which it is
written, the large round hand of the scribe, and
thanks also to the zealous interest of those who
have kept it among their archives and transmit-
ted it safely from generation to generation. If all
the books in Bombay were printed or written on
such paper, we would have no fear of their future
condition. But, unfortunately, this is not the
case. That which the locust hath left the cater-
pillar hath eaten, that which the caterpillar hath
left the cankerworm hath eaten, and the palmer-
T98 Book of BOMBAY.
worm and white-ant will devour the residue. If
things go on as they are, we are safe in saying
that in the year 2000 every book now in Bombay
will have crumbled into dust or leaf-mould, ex-
cept the Birds of Asia, which may still maintain
a feeble and fluttering existence on the tables of
the Asiatic Society. We except also the holo-
graph Wellington and Contemporary Despatches,
in the Secretariat, which have been, as respects
climate and insects, carefully bound in 8 vols.
morocco, by a late Secretary to Government ; and
no doubt, if well kept, they will defy the lapse of
time and the fingering of visitors. Every reader
in the public libraries of Bombay will bear us
out that the leaves of many of the books are as
brittle as tinder. You must take them up ten-
derly; and woe betide the unlucky wight who,
at the tenth hour, when deep sleep falleth upon
men, foldeth down the corner of the leaf he is
perusing, for when he next openeth the tome,
the dog-ear will drop to the ground, a silent
monitor to remind him not only of the ravages of
the monsoon and the white-ants, but of his own
stupid and unpardonable act. And as for news-
papers, we question very much whether a perfect
consecutive series exists for the last thirty years.
If it does we have not been able to find it. This
BOOK OF GOMBROON. 199
is much to be deplored, for a time will un-
doubtedly come in the progress of this city when
everything connected with its history and the
preservation of its public muniments will be re-
garded with more zeal and interest than at
present. If our University and all those seats
of learning that are rising around us mean any-
thing, they mean that men will come forth from
their walls who will ask the question how Bom-
bay comes to hold the pre-eminent position it
does as a city among the nations of the East,
what were the means and who were the indi-
viduals who helped to accomplish this great end.
HISTORY NOT ANTIQUARIANISM.
Why should this species of knowledge be rele-
gated to the domain of antiquarianism, as if the
history which God has given us for our profit
were a collection of tinpots, rusty pans, and old-
wives' fables 4 History surely has nobler uses
than this ; and the English have nothing to
hide in regard to the part they have played in
the history of Western India. No injury can
possibly accrue to the natives by a knowledge of
the past. Let them know that their ancestors
were plundered by the Peshwas almost within
the memory of man, and their heads beaten with
200 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
wooden mallets, and that they had never a pice
they could call their own ; that the land which
now waves with rich harvests of grain and cotton
was once overgrown with weeds ; and that their
masters were such tyrants and oppressors, that
industry itself ceased to be a virtue, and men
were driven to the open country, to fight for
existence like the wild beasts of the earth.
Those were the days in Bombay when there
were no meetings of Town Council, nor in Poona
drives in open carriages to Bamboorda. They
will be all the better for this knowledge ; the
seeds of philanthropy and religion will them fall
on a kindlier soil, and the men who are now
suspicious of you will become your friends and
allies, helpers in the great work of the regenera-
tion of mankind. The natives of this country
are not less sensible than we are to the lessons of
history. They only need educating in it; and
for them the history of Western India must surely
be more interesting than, say, the Conquest of
Peru, or even the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Bmpire.
The text which has called forth this sermon is
a small one, for it would be difficult to select a
place less known, or less fitted to awaken an
interest of any kind in the reader. You cannot
BOOK OF GOMBROON, 201
get excited about Gombroon,” for the history of
a small factory on the Persian Gulf, subordinate
to Bombay, at a time when Bombay itself was
not above the level of mediocrity, is certainly
not attractive. And yet from 1621 to 1759 suc-
cessive relays of Englishmen were sent to its
inhospitable shores, to help to build up somehow,
not even in India itself, the fabric of the Indian
Empire. For the Englishmen of those days stuck
at nothing. Persia was in anarchy: there was
bad trade ; there was nothing but disease; there
was nothing but death. But still the procession
up the Straits of Ormuz went on, of these belated
victims, doomed to die.
MORTALITY BILLS.
The scene opens with Danvers Graves, Presi-
dent; Wood, Percival, and Wents, council. A
few days pass, and the black camel which kneels
at every man’s doorſ comes for Graves. Graves
mounts, obedient to the summons. Then it kneels
for Percival; then for Wents. They all, at inter-
vals, ride away to the silent land.
Emboldened by success, it came for Wood.
Wood was tough; looked the grisly undertaker in
* Represented by Bunder Abbas.
t Turkish Proverb.
26
202. BOOK OF BOMBAY.
the face, and probably said with Wycliffe, “Go
away ! I shall not die, but live and declare the
works of the Lord,” or more probably he said,
“I shall live, make money, and sell piece-goods.”
The brute this time does not kneel, merely makes
a feint of doing so, curls the lip, snarls, groans,
and passes on. Wood was saved by the skin of
his teeth; in his own words, “through the mercy
of God, who thought fit to prolong my life, for
the enjoyment (I hope) of a more agreeable
climate.”
The fittest survive; sometimes they do. It is
not a bad thing, however, in qualifying for this
competition for existence to have a strong heart,
stout lungs, and a steady pulse ; in other words,
to be sound in wind and limb. But Wood was
so nearly dead that Dr. Forbes gave him up, and
Brabazon Ellis in Bussorah, believing that he
too had drunk of the promotion wine, becomes
almost hilarious, and writes all imaginable com-
pliments to his supposed successor, taking good
care to warn the locum temens, whoever he might
be, black or white, not to break a seal or touch
dead men’s effects until a properly covenanted
servant arrives. The scene changes. A fresh
batch of Civil Servants from Bombay, consisting
of Douglas, Sedgwicke, Secker, and Parsons, soon
BOOK OF GOMBEOG)N. 203
make good the deficiency, take their places at
the Council Board, examine accounts, and sign
their names in token of the correctness thereof.
But still man is mortal. We observe a gap
where the name of Sedgwicke ought to be—
between the other signatures—left vacant for
him by the considerate courtesy of his colleagues.
Will he no come back again P. Alas ! not this
journey. An entry, a few days farther on, tells
us the reason, laconic enough, “Mr. William
Sedgwicke departed this life of nervous fever and
fits.” So the gap still stares us. in the face in
1881, a memento, mori. In these days every:
epithet of deserved abuse was heaped on Gom-
broon. They may all, however, be summed up in
the sailor’s proverb :—“ There is an inch deal
between Gombroon, and hell.”
The Wonder to us is that, under- such cir-
cumstances, any books at all were kept;
and yet here is a book of 160, pages,
closely written, of the same shape, but of
course not so, thick, as a merehant’s ledger:
When one man laid down the pen, another took,
it up. Every letter, inward and outward, is,
copied : what orders were received, what orders.
given, buying wool, selling drabs, recording:
visits, noting politics, repairing premises, fitting
204 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
out ships, reforming drunkards, cash received ;
each item, disbursements likewise, month by
month, details of servants' wages, stable and
garden expenses, accounts examined, and at-
tested by the holograph signatures of the survi-
vors or survivor.
The year 1752 was annus mirabilis. It had
only 354 days in it ; and yet we have here over
200 entries, many of them pages in length neatly
written under as many days.
Such are some of the prosaic details of which
this volume consists ; but it was by such methods
the Englishman gained standing ground in the
East. Not all the glory belongs to Clive and
Wellington. By unknown men, and in places
equally unknown, the battle was fought and the
foundation laid of the Indian Empire. They had
almost none of our advantages, though they
helped to make them. They worked in obscurity
and they died in obscurity, mute and inglorious
if you will, but not unheroic as they laid them-
selves down to sleep on the deserts of Asia.
THE INESTAND.
Amid these sombre shadows there is a gleam
of human activity and misdirected energy. As
often happens in an emergency or big disaster,
BOOK OF GOMBROON, 206
some one is found busying himself with the
veriest trifles. As in the catastrophe on the
Bhore Ghaut, some years since, where poor
Howard was killed, the gentleman next him,
extricating himself (besmeared with blood) from
the débris of the broken train, was confronted by
his servant, weeping bitterly, and bearing in his
hand the fragments of a cigar-box, the cause of
all his loud lamentation. But we proceed. The
new comers from Bombay take their respective
seats at the Gombroon Council table, and reso-
lutely proceed to overhaul the accounts. The
fact gradually dawms upon them that from the
property of the East India Company a silver
inkstand is missing. We are left in doubt as to
whether it was solid silver, German silver, or
Britanmia metal—two species of bi-metallism
that gave the world much trouble in the
eighteenth century. On this the depositions are
silent. It apparently existed once, but not in
the memory of man; but nevertheless year by
year it stood in the annual balance of accounts a
substantial asset of the factory. It could not
walk away of itself. Mr. Wood does not aver
that it was stolen. It could not wear away like
mapery ; or old knives in India, reduced to atte-
muated shadows by grinding and attrition. What
206 BOOK OT BOMBAY.
if Wood melted it down into bangles for his aunt,
or domiciled it with his uncle. In any case is
not this a crime of the first magnitude, to be
punished by the judges ; fraud, culpable care-
lessness, breach of trust, falsification of accounts,
and all that sort of thing f
We know not whose lynx eyes were instru-
mental in making this great discovery. Was it
*Douglas or Secker ? Or the young writer Par-
sons, urged on to glorious issues? There is a
proverb about new brooms.
“May 25, 1753. In the accounts of house-
hold furniture, there appearing sundry articles
which are actually worn out, and also an Ink-
stand in the account of plate which Mr. Wood
declares he has never seen since his arrival, as
do the linguist and factory brokers who have
been thirty years in the factory, it is now agreed
that they be wrote off and particular mention be
made of the standish in our next advices to the
Honourable President and Council.”
So the Inkstand was written off in Gom-
broom, and nobody was hanged. When the
waves reached our city there would be some
commotion ; but they would soon expend them-
selves, and find their level on the bastions of
Bombay Castle. We have seen that men were
BOOK OF GOMBROON. 207
not immortal in Gombroon. We now see
that they were not infallible. “ 1752, Octo-
ber 5.-Account salary for one month and
six days’ salary due to Henry Sewage, Esquire,
on his departure, included by mistake in the
salary bill dated 31st July last, and now paid
back, Rs. 120.”
ETCETERA.
The two great bugbears of these times, which
have become serious realities in our own, were
the Russians and the Afghans—Offgooms, a bizarre
spelling which may please some of the disciples
of Sir William Jones or Dr. Hunter. Both the
India House and Bombay were extremely anxious
to know about the Russians; and the Gombroom
factory furnished them with all needful informa-
tion on the sales of Russian piece-goods and
other matters, describing the route taken by the
Russian gentlemen with their drabs and broad-
cloth from Astrakhan to Muscat. I am inclined
to think that this is the first notice we have of
Russian traders here, an after result due doubt-
less to the enterprize of Peter the Great. There
was an air of great mystery about everything
Russian in India, and even the Tapti for a
generation later on was considered by intelligent
Englishmen to rise in the mountains of Great
208 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Tartary.* Mildew in piece-goods turns up in
these old times to vex the souls of the factors,
and two other evils of more ancient date affect-
ing the bodies and souls of men, drunkenness and
incontinence, which were visited with expulsion
pro tent. Geologists may be interested to learn
that in these parts, and in this age, the sea gained
on the land so rapidly as to threaten the English
House, and extort a cry to Bombay to sanction
means of protection from its invasion. This was
the year when the style was changed, and Bom-
bay wrote Gombroon to call the 3rd September
the 14th September, and so on afterwards, allow-
ing 11 days to lapse ; which was done. The men
(per mensem) profited by this. Everything for
the India House was sent overland—that is the
word and our age is not the inventor of it—via
Bagdad and Aleppo, whence the Consul forward-
ed the Bombay, Surat, and Gulf letters on to
Europe. s -
We may as well, however, remark that on and
after this date down through all the French Re-
* Nikitin, the Russian who was in the Bombay Presidency in
1468-74, says:– “And I poor sinner brought a stallion to the land
of India. With God's help I reached Jooneere all well, but it
cost me a hundred roubles.” An amusing and early instance of
the horse trade of Arabia with India. If the Russians only read
the description which follows, they would surely never think of
coming to India. “All are black and wicked, and the women
all harlots or witches or thieves and cheats; and they all de-
stroy their masters with poison.” -
BOOK OF GOMBROON. 209
volutionary epoch, this was the Orthodox route
for quick letters to Europe, overland, a great deal
more so than the route Waghorn opened up to
us through Egypt fifty years ago, and which, it
appears, will now hold good to the end of time,
unless, indeed, the railway whistle shrieks
through the deserted streets of Babylon and
Nineveh.* If our memory serves us, there
is an allusion in the earliest transactions of the
Bombay Chamber of Commerce to an English
mail agent being murdered on the Bagdad route.
Angria was a name that still sent a tremour
through Leadenhall-street; and the factory assure
their masters that the great pirate never comes
out of his creek or monsoon hiding-place until
after September.
Richard Bourchier sits King in Bombay Castle;
sometimes styled Governor, and as often President
or General. f. Two future Governors, Thomas
* During the monsoon of 1839 and 1840 letters were forward-
ed via the Persian Gulf and across the desert to Beyrout, and
thence to Europe.
+ This was the gentleman with whom Lord Clive had the
angry tussle when in Bombay. I can only afford space for the
last sentence of a remarkable letter to him which has been pre-
served. It is dated Bombay, 13th April, 1756 :—“Considering the
rank I bear of Lieutenant-Colonel in His Majesty's service, of
Deputy Goyernor, of St. Davids, of a Member of Committee of
this place, I do not think I have been treated by the Honourable
Richard Bourchier, Esquire, agreeably to the intention of the
Honourable the Court of Directors, who, I flatter myself, will
do me justice therein, , when they come to hear thereof. I am.
with respect, Honourable Sir and Sirs, your most obedient hum-
ble servant, ROBERT CLIVE.” .--
27
210 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Hodges” and William Hornby, sit with him in
Council ; and a third, Crommelin, sways the
sceptre as Chief at Surat. Brabazon Ellis, the
luckiest Englishman of his age in Western India,
wields a flowing pen at Bussorah, a man that
neither disease nor impecuniosity can touch ; his
covenant seems well ordered in all things, and
sure ; and Daniel Draper has just finished his
career as warehouse keeper at Gombroon. He
had not then entered on that ill-starred alliance
with Eliza, a lady destined to startle two priests
out of their propriety, one famous or infamous
in the Church of Eugland, the other famous and
infamous in the Catholic Church of France.
THE LORD OF THE HOT COUNTRIES.
We give in a foot-note a specimen letter from
this gentleman to an English Captain.f He
only owed allegiance to one man.
“The Bactrian Sophi from the horns
Of Turkish Crescent leaves all waste behind.”
* These four men held the Governorship of Bombay 34 years :—
Richard Bourchier 1750-1760, Charles Crommelin 1760-67, Thomas
Hodges 1767-71, William Hornby 1771-84.
f THE TRANSLATION OF NASSEIR CAUN'S ORDER.
Mahomed Nasseir, slave of God, Prince of Princes, Supreme
Lord of the Hot Countries, to whom the Grand Sophi of Persia is
alone superiour, sends this his special Order unto the trustworthy
English Captain, elected by favour of the Holy Jesus to fill the
seat of Christian Dignity at Bunder Abassee.
The Omnipotent. Creator of the Universe, who of his great
Wisdom has appointed Kings and Rulers to act, as his Deputy's
throughout the world for the support of Justice, and for the
BOOK OF GOMBROON, 211
FOUR GRADATIONS OF SERVICE
meet the eye in this book. There is the Coun-
cil at home, the Council at Bombay, the Coun-
cil at Gombroom, and their subordinate at Bus-
sorah. There is an etiquette in the language
they address each other which pleases us to
linger over. The India House letters are sub-
scribed “Your loving Friends.” Then follow
the signatures of twenty individuals—members
of the governing body. When Bombay writes
Gombroon she follows in the same ancient strain
of endearment. A noble house in many ways
was this old India House. An inferior may not,
however, thus address a superior ; so we have in
this book every gradation of respect represented
from the lowest footstool up to the mighty throne
of the Nabobs. “Right Worshipful Sir and
Sirs,” says Bussorah to Gombroom. “ Your
universal tranquility of mankind, requires the most unfeigned
humility in the reception, and the strictest obedience in the
execution of their commands from all subjects and inferiors
whatever. Be it therefore known unto you the trustworthy Cap-
tain of the English Factory that I, Mahomed Nasseir, slave of
God, &c., &c., demand the immediate service of your ship to
proceed in company with the Ramawny to the entrance of Shoft
river, and in conjunction with her to prevent the King's ship
from being delivered into the hands of the Muscat Arabs, which
the base Traitor Abdul Shaik has enter'd into an agreement to
do, for a valuable consideration in money ; an whatever may be
requisite to be come in regard to the present business Messe
Suttoon, my faithful servant, will advertise you of. Be expedi-
tious and careful in performing that duty which is now incum-
bent on you, and wait in hourly expectation of my coming.
Seal’d the seal of -
NASSEIR CAUN —.
212 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
most humble and most obedient servant, B.
Ellis.”
“To the Honourable Richard Bourchier, Esq.,
President and Governor in Council in Bombay,”
writes Gombroom, opening with “ Honoured Sir
and Sirs;” and in like manner Gombroon heads
its London letters “To the Honourable the
Court of Directors for affairs of the United Com-
pany of Merchants of England trading in the
East Indies.” Then follows, “ May it please
your honours ;” and concludes with all due
respect as becometh, “may it please your
honours, your most faithful and most obedient
humble servants,”
The Empire of India is complex in its origin ;
but if it grew out of anything it grew out of a
company of merchants.
* The French are great masters of this art :—Agreez Mom-
sieur l'assurance de ma paºſaite consideration avee la quelle
j’ai l'hom new” d'etre le plºws devowe de vos servitewºrs. But there
was no greater Stickler for the #. method of concluding a
letter than General Wellesley Bahadoor. With a small running
hand like a lady's, each line an inch separate, Wellington soon
covers a sheet of paper, even the large foolscap of his days. The
letter is perhaps one short terse Sentence : after which comes the
flowing conclusion filling a whole page, “I have the honour to
be, Sir, with the greatest respect your most obedient, faithful,
and humble servant, Arthur Wellesley.” He too addresses “The
Honourab e Jonathan Duncan, Esquire,” a correct designation,
we believe, for all Governors and Councillors who are not Hon-
ourables in their own right, albeit common use sanctions it not
in our day. There is nothing like a letter for bringing a dead
man to life again, Specially when the talc from the glass sparkles
on the name, and has been shaken by the hand of Arthur Wel-
lesley. The particles still glitter on the autograph, though the
hand that shook them out has long crumbled into dust.
BOOK OF GOMBROON. 213
PEOPLE WERE HERE BEFORE US.
Gombroom was a common place, dull and dreary
enough in all conscience ; and yet around its
shores Nearchus once manoeuvred the fleet of
Alexander. Hither also (for Ormus is within
hail) came in spirit Milton, who has given to it
an undying fame, in one line of Paradise Lost,
in his description of the devil’s throne in Pande-
monium, which
“Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind.”
There was a Russian proverb, “whatever is pro-
duced on earth you find at Ormus.”
We would except Ice, the mention of which
brings us appropriately to William Baffin,
who was killed in 1621, at the siege of
Kismis, a neighbouring island, and is buried
there. His grave is unknown ; but his name, in
Baffin’s Bay, covers several degrees of the Arctic
Circle.
THE ENGLISH SIRNAMES OF BOMBAY.
There are historical names which have at inter-
vals occupied the public eye for more than a
century, specially in Western India those of
214 |BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Carnac and Malet.* Such instances are, how-
ever, much more numerous in Bengal.
IBut confining ourselves to the names men
tioned in this book, it is strange to observe with
what unfailing persistency, and without any
genealogical succession that we can see, the same
names crop up in our day. Ellis, Graves, Sym-
mons, Wood, Wilson, Hunt, Draper, Sedgwick,
Parsons, Percival, Crawley, Sewell, Douglas,
Shaw, Forbes, Kerr, stalk across the foot-boards
of 1752, and disappear into the darkness. It is
no doubt a mere accident ; the names are not
uncommon, and may continue to repeat them-
selves in every age of Bombay until
TEIE END OF THE CHAPTER.
* General Carnac was Clive's second in command at the
Battle of Plassey. His tomb in Bombay Cathedral was erected
by his nephew, Mr. Rivett, member of Council, and father of the
late Sir James Rivett Carnac. The last offshoot from this old
genealogical tree was Sir Richard Temple, nephew of the afore-
Baid Sir James. The Malets have been before the Bombay public
for the last hundred years.
H 0 RAT I O N E L S 0 N
OR BOMBAY 1775.
217
CHAPTER IX,
|HORATIO NELSON :
OR BOMBAY 1775.
WAs Lord Nelson in Bombay ? This question
has never been mooted by his biographers, nor
by any one else, so far as we know. But every-
thing connected with the early history of a great
man is interesting. Our belief has long been
that Lord Nelson spent a considerable portion of
the time he was in the East Indies in Bombay
and neighbouring waters, and that belief is
founded on his own words:—“ I was placed in
the Seahorse, 20 guns, with Captain Farmer, and
watched in the foretop, from whence in time I
was placed on the quarter deck, having in the
time I was in this ship visited almost every part
of the East Indies, from Bengal to Bussorah.”
Nelson was born in 1758, left England in the
end of 1773 in the Seahorse for the East Indies,
where he remained eighteen months, at the end
* Life of Nelson. From his Lordship's manuscripts ; by Clarke
and M'Arthur. London. 3 vols.
28
218 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
of which, broken down in health, he was trans-
ferred from the Seahorse to the Dolphin, and
reached England in 1776. His Indian career
is a total blank, and closes like the sea behind
his ship. The course of the Seahorse has been
hitherto as visionary as the Flying Dutchman,
but we are now in a position to establish the
fact that the Seahorse arrived in Bushire from
Bombay and Muscat on May 12, 1775, that she
sailed from Bushire on July 15, reached Muscat
on July 31, and arrived in Bombay on August 17,
same year. This accounts, at all events, for
four months of the Seahorse, during which she
was twice in Bombay harbour. There was a
reason for her being in Bombay. This was the
time we were at war with the Mahrattas, when
we took possession of Tanna and Salsette, and
Sir Edward Hughes's squadron, to which the
Seahorse belonged (this is matter of history),
was riding at anchor in Bombay harbour on
February 17, 1776, and how long before we know
not. We have now before us the journal” of a
man who describes the voyage from Bushire to
Bombay in the Seahorse, and narrates the inci-
dents of it with graphic power. The journal was
* Travels in Asia and Africa : by the late Abraham Parsons,
Esq. London : Printed for Longman, 1808.
HORATIO NEILSON. 219
not published until thirty-three years after it was
written—in 1808—three years after the death of
Nelson. Had Lord Nelson been alive we are
sure that he would have read with much interest
the narrative of a voyage when he himself, we
believe, was so much prostrated by disease as not
to be able to concern himself with anything.
There is no notice, however, of the young mid-
shipman, and we did not expect it. Nelson was then
the great unknown, and less likely to be noticed
than Scott was at Sir Adam Ferguson’s, or Burns
when he wandered unknown on the banks of Fail.
Abraham Parsons was a Bristol man, an old
skipper, Consuland Factor Marine (whatever that
may mean) to the Turkey Company at Scanderoon,
the proposed terminus of the Euphrates. Railway
still in nubibus. A shrewd observer, somewhat akin
to another captain of a previous generation, who
has leftus much valuable information on Bombay
matters—we mean Alexander Hamilton. One
fine morning in 1774 the said Parsons packed up
histraps, to wit, twenty camel-loads offmerchandise
andbaggage, notforgetting wine, beer, andrum,and
bade adieuto Scanderoon. We donot wonder at it,
for it is a beastly place, and has been cursed by all
men who have any regard for their healths for well
nigh twenty centuries. Like so many a hero in
220 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
the “Arabian Nights,” combining business with
pleasure, he set out for Bagdad, and after seeing
the City of the Caliphs, found his way to Bushire.
Here he found the redoubtable Seahorse. Bear
in mind that we have Nelson’s own words that
he had sailed the Persian Gulf:— *
“Bushear, 1775, May 12.—There arrived and
anchored in the road his Majesty’s ship Seahorse,
Captain George Farmer, from Bombay, but last
from Muscat, May 24. This day I accompanied
Captain George Farmer, by his desire, from the
town of Bushear to the road on board the Betty.
“July 15.—At five in the morning, I em-
barked on board his Majesty’s ship the Seahorse.
Captain George Farmer, who anchored in the
outer road to wait for the (merchant) ships.
which were to proceed with him to Bombay.”
“August 3, 1775.—At Muscat.
“ 17. –At 2 in the morning we saw the light
of Old Woman’s Island, near Bombay. At day-
light we discovered the town of Bombay ; and at
10 in the morning we anchored.
“His Majesty’s ship was saluted with the
guns from the Castle as usual, which was re-
turned with two guns less than the salute.”
We may now draw breath and take a look at the
Seahorse asshelies in Bombay harbour. It was on
board this ship that Nelson had his first dreams of
HORATIO NELSON. 221
ambition and glory. We have his own words for
it :-‘‘ I will be a hero, and, confiding in Provi-
dence, will brave every danger.” The good angel
came to him with this when he was about to throw
himself overboard. It was in this ship that a malig-
nant disorder caught hold of him, which Southey,
in his Life, tells us baffled all powers of medicine,
and he was reduced to a skeleton, having entirely
lost for some time the use of his limbs. Parsons
here comes to our aid and fills up the spaces be-
tween the lines. This voyage of the Seahorse to
the Persian Gulf was a most sickly one. Parsons
says:—“ Fluxes among our crew, combined with
excessive heat coming down the Gulph, so debi-
litated our men, that some days twelve men fell
down on the deck through excessive weakness.”
“Few escaped the disorder, either officer or
private man.” “The captain and nineteen
men out of one hundred and seventy escaped it.
Not a man died of those who were attacked.”
We do not doubt that this was the sickness
Nelson fell a victim to. They were nearly
wrecked. “Two lieutenants and the master de-
sired admittance into the cabin, having some-
thing of importance to offer to Captain Farmer :
they were accordingly admitted, when they explain-
ed the necessity of leaving such of the convoy be-
222 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
hind as could not keep up with the Seahorse, observ-
ing that if the ship could not make any southing,
we should fall in with the land to the north of the
isle of Diu, where there was no harbour; but, on the
contrary, a dangerous shore, and a still more in-
hospitable set of men, and should they keep on
the course which we now held, it would not only
endanger the loss of his Majesty’s ship, but the
lives of every man on board. Captain Farmer
thought their reasons so cogent that he followed
their advice, and we left those ships that could
not keep up with us.” Were all officers so
faithful and independent in the exercise of the
trust committed to them, and all commanders
so reasonable and open to conviction as Captain
Farmer, we venture to think that there would be
fewer wrecks. The Nelson family had some
roving connection with Bombay. Lord Nelson's
brother had been in the Indian Navy, been mur-
dered, and his murderers were hanged on Gibbet
Island in the harbour. Strange to say, that
Mackintosh had lived—and a judge—for eight
years in Bombay, and never had heard of it—
merely heard it from a casual observation which
fell from the master of the ship in which he
went home. Hangings were few in these days,
and we can merely guess that the event took
HORATIO NELSON. 223
place long previously—perhaps thirty years be-
fore Mackintosh arrived in the country.
The only other circumstance connecting Nelson
with Bombay was his celebrated Battle of the
Nile Letter to Governor Duncan of 9th August,
1798. A special officer, Lieutenant Duval, was
sent with it, armed with letters to the Consuls
and merchants at Alexandretta, Aleppo, Bus-
sorah, &c. Nelson said he would pay the cost of
this letter himself if the Government refused to
do it. It came in time to save an immense out-
lay in the war defences of Bombay.
“If my letter is not so correct as might be
expected, I trust your excuse when I tell you
my brain is so shaken with the wound in my
head, that I am sensible I am not always as clear
as could be wished. But whilst a ray of reason
remains, my heart and hand shall ever be exert-
ed for the benefit of our king and country.”
Behold then, reader, if you like, Nelson’s first
appearance on the Custom's Bunder of Bombay.
But in case of misconception, we must ask you
to clear away the Refreshment Room, and the
bravery and bunting of the Gardens, and the
Reclamations, Wellington and otherwise, that
have so transmogrified the pristine beauty of this
ancient rendezvous. A youth, diminutive in ap-
pearance, of 17 years of age, and of a somewhat
224 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
florid countenance, heightened by the sea-brine,
—a midshipman. Negligent in his dress, but
as clean as a new gun. Careless of the refined
courtesies of polished life, but with an address
and conversation of irresistible charm.
His cronie, Tom Troubridge, is with him, and
like greyhounds out of the leash they disappear.
Bombay was then great in astrologists. One of
them had predicted the death of the last Gov-
ernor Hodges, and it came to pass. But there
was no horoscope of this beardless youth, or of
a time
“When Nelson o'er his country's foes
Like the destroying angel rose.”
No cloud yet darkened the manly brow of Trou-
bridge, or presaged his coming woe—the Culloden
ashore in the bay of Aboukir, or the Blenheim”
engulphed in the Madagascar Seas. Montgomery
has written his dirge—
“On India’s long expected strand
Their sails were never furled ;
Never on known or friendly land
By storms their keel was hurled ;
Their native soil no more they trod,
They rest beneath no hallowed sod
Throughout the living world.
This sole memorial of their lot
Remains—They were, and they are not.”
Having now, as we think, satisfactorily brought
* Sir Thomas Troubridge sailed from England in 1808. Never
beard of.
HORATIO NELSON. 225
Nelson to Bombay, our course is plain enough,
as the Bombay of 1775 is not difficult to pourtray.
We give Parson’s account,” and supplement it
from some other sources. The town had a popu-
lation of about 150,000, the walls were complete,
William Hornby, Governor; Town House, the
old Court House, still standing opposite dock
gates; Country House, Parell. James Forbes,
the author of the Oriental Memoirs, and grand-
father of the celebrated Count Montalembert
was here, already Eliza Draper had left, and the
ladies abounded in acts of philanthropy and
* The town of Bombay is near a mile in length from Apollo
Gate to that of the bazaar, and about a quarter of a mile broad
in the broadest part from the Bunda across the Green, to Church
Gate, which is nearly in the centre, as you. Walk round the walls
between Apollo and Bazaar Gate. There are likewise two marine
gates, with a commodious wharf and Cranes built out from each.
gate, besides a landing-place for passengers only. Between the
two marine gates is the Castle, properly called Bombay Castle,
a very large and strong fortification which commands the bay ;.
the works round the town are so many, and the bastions so very
strong and judiciously situated, and the whole defended with a
broad and deep ditch, so as to make a strong fortress, which,
while it has a sufficient garrison and provisions, may bid de-.
fiance to any force which may be brought against it. Here is a
spacious green, capable. Of containg several regiments exercising
at the same time ; the streets are Well laid out, and the buildings
(viz., gentlemen's houses) so numerous and handsome, as to make
it an elegant town. The Soil is a Sand mixed with small gravel,
which makes it always So Clean, eV.en in the rainy season, that!
a man may walk all over the town, within half an hour, after a
heavy shower, without dirtying his shoes. The esplanade is very
extensive, and as smooth and even as a bowling green, which
makes either walking or riding round the town very pleasant. ,
Near the extreme point of Old Woman’s Island next the sea is a
very lofty lighthouse, the Jight of, which is so bright and well
watched that it may be discerned at five leagues' distance. On ,
this island are two large_barracks for the military ; sometimes a
camp is formed here. It has good grass, not many trees, and as
few houses, but neither town nor Village. It lies so very open toº
the sea, all round, as to be deemed a very healthy place, whither.
people after recovering from illness, frequently move for 9.
change of airs,
29.
226 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
benevolence. Several tombstones at Sonapore of
this date record the pleasing manners and persons
of the deceased. There is no countenance given
by Parsons to the pulla fish origin of Apollo. It
is spelled as we do now-a-days. Bunder becomes
Bunda, a pronunciation agreeable to all who
have been born within reach of the sound of Bow
Bells. Nelson, we think, could have had few
pleasant reminiscences of Bombay, and would
turn his back with indifference on the Colaba
Lighthouse, and bid good-bye to a place where
the candle of his genius was nearly snuffed out.
Had he died here he would have been among the
first “inhabitants below ’’ in Sonapore, and his
bones would never have been asked for. Nelson
and Wellington were two great captains. Bom-
bay could not hold them long. Fired by new
ambitions, in other lands, they trod an imperial
pathway reserved only for the most illustrious of
mankind. And now at the last they sleep side
by side under the mighty dome of St. Paul’s,
and their names live evermore. ;
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AT
SUEZ, 1798.
229
CHAPTER X.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AT
SUEZ, 1798.
“I have Bonaparte's despatches now before me. Bombay, if
they can get there, I know is their first object.”—Lord Nelson to
Governor Duncan of Bombay. Letter dated Mouths of the Nile,
9th August, 1798.
THERE is a marvellous interest in everything
connected with Napoleon Bonaparte ; and now
that his nephew has come and gone like a dream,
the interest in no way lessens, but his figure
bulks bigger by contrast, for the huge train of
events of which he was the creator beggars
everything that has come after him. When
Louis Napoleon was paving the way for empire
he filled the Paris Théatre Historique with
230 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
gorgeous spectacles, Siege of Toulon, Cross-
ing the Alps, Plains of Italy, and the Invasion
of Egypt; splendid scenic displays of war horses
and fighting men, nowhere more full of start-
ling and brilliant contrasts of East and West
than when Italy was left behind for the tur-
bans, scimitars, camels, palms, and pyramids of
Egypt.
The invasion of Egypt began by the landing
of the expedition, as our readers are aware, in
1798. The date was the 2nd July, and the epi-
sode of Napoleon’s visit to Suez took place in
December of the same year. He spent his Christ-
mas holidays there. -
SUEZ.
Now the half-way house between Europe and
Asia, is a place of no great antiquity, at least
under its present name.” It is here that the
traditions of thirty centuries and the wisest ex-
positors of Holy Writ agree in fixing the locale
of the Exodus and the passage of the Red Sea by
the Israelites. Volney in 1790 says:—“The
ruinous condition of the houses heightens the
melancholy scenery. Nobody remains at Suez
* 1500.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AT SUEZ. 23].
but the Governor, who is a Memlook, and twelve
or fourteen persons who form his household.”
There are glorious sunrises and sunsets here.
Everything is steeped in glowing crimson, and
the red light which overspreads the barren hills
of Suez has been caught by Herbert in his great
fresco in the House of Lords, where Moses is
seen descending from Mount Sinai with the
Tables of the Law. An English lady once set-
tled here brought out with her a quantity of
English earth, of which to make a miniature
garden : “ a dearer, sweeter spot than all the
rest,” for the land hereabout seems as if the
curse of God lay upon it. It has great associa-
tions, but it is a poor consolation to the exile to
be told that Suez is mentioned in the Arabian
Nights”, that he is living on the sight of
Cleopatris, of Arsinoe, or of Kolzium, nay, even
that it was here that the angel of the Lord found
Hagar by a fountain of water on the way to Shur.
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean 2
They say that it is full of vermin. The king
of the fleas keeps his court at Tiberias, but he
has some most wicked vicegerents at Suez,
which seem to combine the poison of Asia with
* Lane's Arabian Nights; Story of Joodar, 1517.
232 BQC)K OF BOMBAY.
the pungency and active habits of modern Eu-
rope. Everybody seems to notice this. Pococke,
in his “ Description of the East and other Coun-
tries,” 1737, says, “full of bugs and vermin;”
and Sir Charles Napier, reduced to skin and
bone in 1851, as we can verify, a “bearded
vision,” the mere atomy of a man, apparently far
beyond the reach of insect attacks, utters these
portentous words: “ bugs abound.” No travel-
ler remains longer than he can help at Suez.
An American once went over to the Wells of
Moses. He was never seen again, -spirited
away by the boatmen or others to the world to
come. But this is the Suez of the past.
HIS VISIT AND SCHEMES.
Bonaparte left Cairo on the 24th December
with 100 horse and 200 foot, and on the 25th
was at Suez. His reasons for visiting Suez we
shall see. He was the first man who took the
Suez Canal out of the region of myth and dream-
land, and gave a practical turn to it by taking
with him a body of engineers. They mapped
the course of the ancient canal and surveyed the
ground deemed practicable for a new one ; and
when Lepere presented his report Bonaparte
uttered these prophetic words:—“La chose est
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AT SUEZ. 233
grande ; ce ne sera pas moi quº maintenant pour-
ra, l’accomplir, mais le gouvermement turc trouvero,
peut-etre wh;fow, sa gloire dans l’eacecution de ce
projet.” When Bonaparte came to Suez his
fortunes were at a low ebb : his army, in a
hostile country, was full of murmurs and dis-
content; and on the 1st August, 1798, the
French fleet was destroyed in the battle of the
Nile.
It was amid these disasters that in the last
days of 1798 Bonaparte came to Suez. One
would say that he had other work cut out for him
than to drink water from the Wells of Moses, or
hold confabulations with the monks of Mount
Sinai. It is believed that during these five days
that he was in the desert he revolved great
schemes. He most probably resolved upon the
invasion of Syria which immediately took place,
and the invasion of England in 1803 which did
not take place. The idea of a canal through the
Isthmus had taken possession of him ; for he
reasoned in this way, that if France were in
possession of a ship-canal the power of England
in India would be broken. This idea, never left
him, and he often recurred to it in conversations
with Sir Hudson Lowe at Saint Helena. We
may well therefore believe that it was on the
30 w
234 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
shores of Suez, with his eye towards the Red
Sea, that this man in grey coat, and arms
akimbo, with all hope of communicating with
France cut off, hemmed in as he was like
a wild beast of unconquerable will, meditated
and projected great schemes on the fate of
India.
He fortified Suez, the Wells of Moses, and
Tor ; transported gunboats on the backs of
camels from Boulak ; surveyed each shore
of the Gulf of Suez as far as Shadwanº ;
saw with his falcon eye our troubles, Mysore
and Mahratta ; saw the unprotected coast of
Guzerat, with its rich harvests, food for man
and beast ; wrote letters to the Shereef of
Mecca, the Imaum of Muscat, and Tippoo
Sahib of Seringapatam,_mere pasteboard and
waste-paper all of them. The sepoys came
from Bombay with Baird from the South, and
Abercrombie came from the North ; and in
March, 1801, when the Highlanders, drenched
with sea-water, rushed up the sand-hills of
Aboukir, they turned the tide of French invasion,
or, as Alison hath it, “ delivered Egypt from
* Where the P. and O. Steamer Carnatic was wrecked abou
a dozen years ago. -
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AT SUEZ. 235
the Republican yoke and decided in its ulti-
mate consequences the fate of the civilised
world.”
“Highlanders Remember Egypt,” were
Sir John Moore’s last words at Corunna.
So say we, all of us, highlanders and low-
landers.
CROSSES THE RED SEA.
At 3 a. m., 28th December, Bonaparte set out
from Suez on his way to the Wells of Moses,
“ out of respect for Moses.” He took 60 foot
and as many of the 100 horse as could con-
veniently accompany him. The cavalcade crossed
the Red Sea, at the spot he assigned to the
Exodus, and returned to Suez the same night.
Being rather late, they made a narrow escape,
for they came across the Gulf lower down, where
the water was deeper. That there was some con-
fusion, disorder, and shouting in the darkness,
and that General Caffarelli’s wooden leg insisted
on swimming seems undoubted. That there was
danger is proved by a native guide linger-
ing behind, doubling the Gulf, and returning
by land to Suez next morning. The follow-
ing despatch is new to us on the contre-
temps, and corroborates the statement that
236 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
General Caffarelli became one of the Horse
Marines:—
3819, au Général Berthier.
Quartier-général, au Caire, 20 nivose an vii,
9th January, 1799.
Le Citoyen Louis, guide à cheval, est nommé brigadier.
Il lui sera fait présent d'un sabre Sur leguel sera ecrit
sur un côte, “ Le général Bonaparte au guide à cheval
Lowis ;” sur l'autre côté passage de la mer Rouge.
BONAPARTE.
Dépôt de la guerre.
Note.—Ce guide avait sauvé le général Caffarelli, don't
le cheval, s'était abattu au passage de la mer Rouge.”
We give Kinglake’s description from that
most delightful of all books of Eastern travel,
Eothem, 1836 :— -
“Napoleon stayed five days at Suez. He made an
attempt to follow the supposed footsteps of Moses, by
passing the Creek at this point ; but it seems, according
to the testimony of the people of Suez, that he and his
horsemen managed the matter in a way more resembling
the failure of the Egyptians than the success of the Israel-
ites. The people at Suez declare that Napoleon parted
from his horse, got thoroughly submerged, and was only
fished out by the assistance of the people on shore.”
There is a charming naïveté about this, and it
* Correspondence de Napoleon Ier. Tome Cinquieme, Publiée,
par ordre de l’Hômpereur Napoleon III.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AT SUEZ. 237
contains such a good joke for Englishmen that
even Bourrienne's narrative, eye-witness as he
was, and the accuracy of a despatch, ought not
to be allowed to impair it.
STATE OF FEELING IN BOMBAY.
Geographically, Suez is a great distance from
Bombay, politically it is very near, though
Arabia lies between, a block so mighty as to
cover an area almost as great as that of India
itself;” and though there were no telegrams
in those days, the sound of these great events
soon penetrated to Western India. Early in
January, 1800, General Stuart writes a long
letter to the Bombay Government on the unpro-
tected state of these coasts and of Surat. Every
movement in Egypt was known to us here.
Spies, secret agents, renegades (their letters may
still be read) made us au fait. So when the venue
was changed to Syria and the cry in India was
“ the Persian Gulf,” we were prepared, People
then did not need Robert Hall’s passionate
appeal “ Recollect for a moment his invasion of
Egypt.” The fact was patent to us night and day.
* Arabia 1,139,600 square miles, India 1,400,000 square miles,—
Reith Johnstone.
238 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
The pressing of cotton still went on? and
ships were laden for China. But where were the
convoys f Scouring the seas in search of that
mysterious French fleet which was seen one day
at Ceylon, and again at the Isle of France. The
mind was on the tenter-hooks, and Sunday gave
no rest. When members of Council were at
prayers in the Cathedral, they were nudged on
the elbow to come ek dwm to a meeting of Coun-
cil next door. The editors of the Courier and
Gazette—for both papers then existed—were
warned to publish neither arrival nor departure,
nor that which was expected. A man was station-
ed on the mast-head of the Suffolk, at the har-
bour mouth, on the outlook night and day.
There was quite a flutter among the merchants
* REPACKING AND SCREWING A BALE OF COTTON Rs. 3-3-36.
Charges for repacking and screwing a bale of cotton in Com-
pany’s and warehouse-keepers' screws, viz. :—
Hamalage from the present shed to the Marine Bunder
or Ramooy Screws ......................................................... 0 12
Altering Wrapers ................................... .......................... 0 0 16
Hemp rope ............................................... ........................ 1 2 0
Stretching rope.......…................... : “”, “ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 0 0 8
Twine used in repacking, uncertain but supposing ......... 0 0 12
Screwing bales in the Screws............................................ 0 0 14
Repacking.......................................................................... 1 0 0
Screwing ........................................................................... 1 0 0
Twine for sewing the bale when pressed ...... .* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 0 0 12
Weighing at 4 reas per cwt., make per bale ..................... 0 14
Hamalage from any of the above screws to the bunder-
head to be shipped .......................................................... 0 40
Shipping off into the boat................................................... 0 0 8
RS. 3 3 36
ROBERT KITSON, Warehouse-Keeper.
Bombay, 10th June, 1800. º
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AT SuH]Z. 239
when tenders were asked for the Egyptian Expe-
dition. Charles Forbes opens the ball. Then
comes Bruce, Fawcett and Co., and Charles
Adamson with his big ship. “To all those con-
versant with shipping it is a point universally
known, that small vessels are navigated with
much greater expense than large ones.” Un-
demiable. Arthur Wellesley was here, and had
he gone in the vessel intended for him, he would
never have been heard of. We need not ask
whence all this excitement. Napoleon had been
at Suez ; and the reader of the commonest
history-books can see what Bonaparte did after
this, and he will estimate what his capabilities
then were. For who could tell ? The world
was then in the throes of revolution, and it was
an open question whether the vessel of the Eng-
lish State in India might not go down in a sea
of anarchy. Nelson, Wellington, and Abercrom-
bie, each in his own sphere, backed by the wisdom
of English statesmen and the resources of the
English nation, solved for us, under Almighty
Providence, the momentous question.
THE SUEZ CANAL.
The two Napoleons, uncle and nephew, I. and
III., had much to do with the Suez Canal. We
240 Book of BOMBAY.
have seen that Bonaparte was the first to put
the idea into a tangible shape. Of this the
proofs are incontestible, for why did he come to
Suez 2 And Louis Napoleon gave it such ma-
terial and political assistance as was possible to
him. These two men were, in a sense, the
Alpha and Omega of the Canal; and had
Ferdimand Lesseps erected a monument to
either of the Bonapartes as high as the Co-
lossus of Rhodes, he would but have fol-
lowed the instincts of nature and the dictates
of reason, which govern the mass of man-
kind. But Lesseps is not an ordinary man,
and does not work by Ordinary methods, or
he would have been content with the geogra-
phical limits which had been assigned by mature
to two seas since the birth of time. He did not
make the canal to break the power of England
in India or destroy her commerce. Bonaparte
to him was merely the shadow of a name, and
his nephew a convenient instrument to accomplish
his designs. Thus it was when he had brought
this great work to a triumphant conclusion, and
when any other Frenchman full of Egyptian
memories might think of Napoleon, Caesar, or
Alexander “ the brave youth of Macedon,” he
bethought himself of a poor but honest English-
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AT SUEZ. 24.1
man” who did much in his day to create and
further overland traffic, and who spent prodigally
his substance, his health, yea, his very life in
its accomplishment, “ in journeyings often, in
perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in hunger,
thirst, cold, heat, and nakedness.”
Put what has all this to do with Bombay P
Everything in the world. Bombay has good
cause of congratulation in this matter. Waghorn
organised, worked, and completed the overland
traffic for mails, and we rather think also for
passengers, himself, his sole support being the
Bombay Steam Committee. This was from 1831
to 1834,-three years on his own hook before
the British Government touched it with its little
finger. It was then the East India Company,
and its Directors, almost to a man, and the Post-
office authorities, frowned upon him and his
work. But when fortune deserted him, Bombay
came to his aid. The Chamber of Commerce
was establishedin 1838. Chairman–Harry George
Gordon. Committee—Peter Ewart, Thomas
Lancaster, John Skinner, Thomas Cardwell,
G. S. King, and others. Among the first sentences &
* Most likely they were acquainted with each other in Egypt.
t Calcutta, Aug. 9, 1836.-“The Overland Mail came in two
months from London to Calcutta, the first time such a thing has
ever happened.”—Hon. Emily Eden's Letters. ... }
31
242 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
of the first report issued by them and it redounds
much to their honour—are words of encourage-
ment to Waghorn.* Nor did Bombay rest satisfied
until the hour of victory came in 1845, when his
messengers ran up the stairs in Leadenhall-street
with a letter for the Directors “delivered in
thirty days.”
Are these things we should willingly let die?
If we should, the statue of Waghorn erected and
consecrated by the genius of Lesseps stands at
Suez to remind us of them, and mute and
motionless as it is, seems to beckon the fleets
of nations from the Eastern Seas to new
enterprise.
“The time shall come when ship-boys e'en shall scorn
To have Alcides fable on their lips;
Seas yet unnamed, with realms unknown adorn
Your charts, and with their fame your pride eclipse.
Then the bold Argo of all future ships
Shall circumnavigate and circle sheer
Whate'er blue Tethys in her girdle clips;
Victorious rival of the sun's career,
And measure e'en of earth the whole stupendous sphere.”
THE FORBES LOANS,
The carrying on of war now-a-days seems a
* “Mr. Waghorn has been assured that the members of this
Institution, in common with the rest, of the mercantile commu-
nity and the public generally, are fully, sensible of the value of
his exertions on the particular, occasion in question of steam
communication in general, which, it is hoped, will be rewarded
with the encouragement and support his public-spirited labours
So well deserve.”—Bombay Chamber of Commerce Transactions
1838-39, pago 3.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AT SUEZ. 243
more complicated and difficult task than in
the days of our grandfathers. Everything
is now, no doubt, on a larger scale. But we
are apt to forget that they had few of the
appliances of modern science, and that steam,
by land and sea, has reduced the transport of
men and material to wonderful simplicity. Any
one who saw the water tanks, the compressed hay,
and the elephants embarking with the Abys-
sinian Expedition, will have a faint idea of the
difficulties of Sir David Baird’s in 1801, in sail-
ing ships and without these appliances. The
Duke, indeed, while in Western India, was in a
perpetual state of unrest, crying out for provi-
sions for his men and forage for his animals.
“The troops must have regular supplies of pro-
visions at command, or misfortune or disgrace
will be the consequence.”* Hence we find
that the deaths among the cattle on the march
were few and far between. This result requires
money ; and owing to the terrorism of the
Peshwa's agents, money had crept into secret
hiding-places, and the shroffs, frightened, and
with good grounds, for their very lives, had
decamped. We must try to realise a time when
the Indian Government had no facility for rais-
* Duke at Ahmednugger to Jonathan Duncan, 1803, Aug. 13.
244 . BOOK OF BOMBAYe
ing money by loan, and when she was not strong
enough to constitute a public creditor in India,
and we will come to the conclusion that the
money question was the question of questions.
There are no public loans to Government in
India before 30th June, 1813.” Twice, in
his public despatches to the Governor-General,
the Duke calls his attention to the fact that a
Bombay merchant had come forward to assist the
Government in its hour of need. I will not con-
descend to go into the question that Sir Charles
Forbes knew what he was doing as well as the
Duke. The facts remain the same, that the Gov-
ernment wanted money, and Sir Charles gave
them it ; and everybody is supposed to know
what he is doing in businesses of this kind. Did
any Native Prince or merchant do, or even offer
to do, what Sir Charles did Ž The amount was
not small. At one time there was £500,000
running, equal to a million of our money, lent
by Forbes and Bruce, Fawcett and Co.—for they
were both interested—and this at a time of scare.
It was a kind of advance to Government on their
growing crop of cotton from Guzerat, teak from
Malabar, sandalwood from Mangalore, at prices
* Notifications relative to the Public Loans of the Govern-
ment of India, republished from the Government Gazette 1822 to
1879-1880.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AT SUEZ. 245
agreed on ; money paid now, and produce taken
delivery of afterwards. Interest was to be paid
by Government at the rate of # per cent. per
month, and 2s. 6d. exchange on such amounts as
might be repaid in England,-sicca rupees
against 12 months’ date bills, we suppose. If they
gained anything on these last items, the labourer
was worthy of his hire. The loans extended
over two or three years. The Forbes loans
enabled the war to go on when the war could not
go on without them, and supplied those sinews
which to the hour and the man were essential to
its prosecution. Who knows if Assaye could
have been fought without them.
CONCLUSION.
History, as a rule, does not recognise such
subjects as we have been discussing, but it is
precisely for that very reason that we discourse
upon them. The facts are well enough known ;
and another reason why we dwell upon them is
that we believe they mark distinct eras in the art
of government and the progress of civilization in
India in which Bombay has borne a most distin-
guished part. Do the Rupee Loans begin vir-
tually with Forbes, and the Overland Traffic
practically with Waghorn ? Both these men
246 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
died about the same time, the one rich and
honoured in England,” the other also in
England, poor and in obscurity. Each in
his own sphere contributed something to the
building of the commonwealth. But the glory
of the one excelleth that of the other. The fame
of Forbes is local and temporary ; but the name
of Waghorn will last to the end of time, or to
such a time, if it ever comes, when men will cease
to remember the benefactors of their species.
* 1849. + 1850.
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON
IN BOMBAY.
249
CHAPTER XI.
| THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON
IN BOMBAY.
A LOVE-PASSAGE.
“I was feasted out of Bombay, and I was feasted into it.”
Duke of Wellington’s Despatches.
“I THANK you for the picture, of which, how-
ever, I must observe, with my friends here, that
the two or three glances which you mention made
very little impression on the fair artist, as the
picture is as like anybody else, as it is of the per-
son for whom it is intended. I shall write to
her, nevertheless, and I propose to tell her that
I am glad that those few glances made an im-
pression upon her memory so exceedingly
favourable ; and I have employed a gentleman
here to draw the picture of a damsel in the
character of a shepherdess, which I shall also
32
250 EOOR OF BOMBAY.
present as the effect of the impression made upon
my memory by the fair artist.
“ARTHUR WELLESLEY.
“Seringapatam, 6th Nov., 1801.”
This passage is crystallized in one of the Duke’s
despatches—shall we say like a gem in a lot of
rubbish 2. It is addressed to Jonathan Duncan,
Governor of Bombay, and tells the old, old story
of romance, love, and flirtation. Poor girl |
When the Duke was a gay young aide-de-camp
at the Irish Court he was engaged to Lady
Catherine Pakenham. While he was in India
she had been attacked by small-pox, and shortly
after he left England she wrote to tell him her
beauty was gone, and that he was a free man.*
How could a young lady, living in Bombay, be
expected to know all this in those days, when
betrothals were not proclaimed from the house-
tops ?
The Duke was thirty-two and an uncommonly
handsome man, and we do not need his portrait
by Lawrence to tell us this. He is described by
Mountstuart Elphinstone, in his Bombay and
Poona days, as almost at times boyish in his
manners. We need not therefore wonder that a
.* But he returned to claim her hand, and her hand was freely
given, 10th April, 1806,
DUKE OF WELLINGTON IN BOMBAY. 25.1
Bombay young lady fell in love with the Duke of
Wellington. There were dozens more, no doubt,
“How happy could I be with either
Were tº other dear charmer away ſ”
The wonder to us is that the Duke ever got out
of the place. Who this lady was we shall never
know. Mrs. Hough”, who was with us until
the other day, could have told us all about it.
There were some good sketchers among the
Bombay ladies of this period, and Mrs. Ash-
burner, the friend of Sir James Mackintosh and
Amelia Opie, has left us a beautiful vignette in
Basil Hall’s travels. But, painter or lover, there
is nothing to be ashamed of. It was a pure, a
tender, and a lofty passion on her part.
“As in the bosom of the stream
The moonbeam dwells at dewy e'en,
So trembling pure was tender love
Within the breast o' bonny Jean.”
And we may well believe that she never told her
love except on this occasion when she confided the
great secret to that “ Brahmanised Scotsman,”f
Jonathan Duncan. His ear was never deaf to
the cry of suffering humanity, as we may still see
from the bas-reliefs on his tomb in the Bombay
* Mrs. Hough died on 24th June, 1873, aged eighty-eight, and
had danced with the Duke in Bombay.
f Mackintosh thus designates him.
252 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Cathedral. “Infanticide abolished in Benares
and Katty war,” in capital letters, proclaims him
the great law-giver, full of mercy as well as
justice. What wonder, then, if he turned away
his attention from the contemplation of the
sickening land tenures of Salsette to the bright
eyes and tenures that bound him to the softer
sex 2 And the Duke—
“Ave Maria, maiden mild,
Listen to a maiden’s prayer.”
The Genius of Flirtation came to his aid in this
great extremity.
“I cannot all day be neglecting Madras,
Or slighting Bombay, for the sake of a lass.”
Happy thought. “I shall write to her, never-
theless,” Reciprocate her affection ? No not
exactly ; pay her back in her own coin ; do to her
as she hath done to me, send her her own portrait
as she hath sent me mine. O, thou Iron Duke
A glorious picture this l Old bachelorf acting
black-footi to a distressed damsel, and the hero
to be of “ a hundred fights” with one more
fyghte added to the number.
The Duke indicates that the picture was that
of “ anybody.” There was one distinguishing
feature in the Duke's physiognomy that made
* Lord Macaulay. t Ætat 45,
4 Go-between in match-making.
I)"UKE OF WELLINGTON IN BOMBAY. 253
him differ from most men. I wonder she did not
manage to paint his nose. I have half a doubt
that the Duke eliminated this portion of his
features in his hasty estimate of the portrait, and
that at that particular moment the genius loci,
d la Pepper's ghost in the shape of Lady Paken-
ham, was looking over his right shoulder.
There is a bungalow at Khandalla, erected by
Mountstuart Elphinstone (Governor, 1819–27),
where he very often resided. It is situated on a
knoll overhanging a great precipice, down which
a water-fall tumbles 1,200 feet in four successive
falls. What if, when the snows of age had de-
scended on the fair shepherdess, at some point
near this, she drew from her album the picture
which Wellesley had sent her ere his brow had
been laurelled by one single victory? You may
rest assured that it was brought forth from its
hiding-place neither in pain, nor in sorrow, nor
in anger, but to a delighted family and friends,
herself more delighted than all the rest. And
then there was
THE DUKE'S NOSE.
If he never saw his own nose nor the nose in
the picture which was gifted to him in 1801, nor
any of the hundred duke's noses scattered over
254 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
the world, it is certain—and who can paint
like Nature ?'—that he saw this one, Ilea,I'
Khandalla.
The Duke was very reticent on the subject of
the ladies of Bombay or the Deccan. In all the
volumes of his Indian despatches, one and only
one, comes in for a share of panegyric. Of one
he says : “She is very fair and very handsome,
and well deserves to be the object of a treaty.”
He wrote this at Panwell. The lady was a widow,
but the treaty alluded to had nothing to do with
matrimony. I think it was tout au contraire to
give the lady a Government pension of Rs. 1,200
per mensem if she did not marry.*
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON IN BOMBAY
AND WESTERN INDIA.
“I am nimmukwalla, as we say in the East,
that is, I have ate of the King’s salt, and there-
fore I conceive it to be my duty to serve with
unhesitating zeal and cheerfulness when of
wherever the King or his Government may think
proper to employ me.”—Reply of the Duke of
Wellington, on a friend remarking to him that he
* The widow of Nana. Furnavese.
DUKE OF WELLINGTON IN BOMBAY, 255
had been reduced from his high rank to the com-
mand of a brigade of infantry.
Elastings.-September, 1805.
TEIE DUEE IN INDIA.
The Duke of Wellington was about eight years
in India (1797 to 1805). He resided in Bombay
in March and April, 1801, when he came to hurry
off Sir David Baird’s expedition to Egypt to meet
the Great Napoleon; and again from March to
May, 1804, after the battle of Assaye. But from
March, 1803, to July, 1804, he was in or about
the Bombay Presidency, and his two great
victories of Assaye and Argaumº were gained in
our neighbourhood+, within 200 miles of Bombay.
Bombay may therefore claim to have some part
in the military education of this illustrious hero,
for Assaye and Argaum are the first in the long
roll of his conquests which history records, and
it was on the burning plains of the Deccan that
Arthur Wellesley first tried his 'prentice hand at
the art of war.
THE BOMBAY OF HIS PERIOD
Was not like the Bombay of to-day, except in
its topographical surroundings, and even these
* ASSaye, 23rd September, 1803. Argaum, 28th November, 1803.
Your victories have taken place in our neighbourhood.—
: Bombay Address, 1804.
256 Book of BoMBAY.
have been modified by land reclamation from the
sea. It was “a city fortified,” and its walls en-
closed a population of about 100,000, with as
many outside. The walls were then in as great
a state of perfection as they ever had been. For
a hundred years men had been stumbling over
half-hewn stones and heaps of unslaked lime.
There were no houses on Malabar Hill. Our
venerable” citizen, Mr. Manockjee Cursetjee, has
pointed out to us the site of the house where the
Duke resided. The walls of the stable only now
remain, and the site is on your right opposite
the wood-wharf as you ascend the steep Siri
road, now much availed of by foot passengers
as a short cut to Malabar Hill and the Ladies’
Gymkhana.
There is
A GREAT DEARTH OF MATERIALS
Out of which to frame the story of the Duke
in Bombay. The fluctuating nature of the Eng-
lish population here forbids anything like con-
tinuous tradition handed down from age to age,
as we have in Europe. Moreover, our subject
was just then emerging into fame. Somebody
* Mr. Manockjee, now possesses a gold locket with the Duke's
hair in it, and a letter from the present Duke, authenticating the
$38,1118, $,
DUKE OF WELLINGTON IN BOMBAY. 257
said lately that it was a pity Mrs. Hough burned
her diary. Perhaps. There are diaries and diaries.
We are certain, however, of this, that it is a real
calamity that the diary of Sir James Mackintosh
covers none of Wellington’s history in Bombay,
nor, indeed, in this presidency. Strange to say,
the Duke had left a week before he arrived, and was
already writing multitudinous despatches under
the shadow of that great battlement of trap and
laterite which we now call Chowk Point when Mac-
kintosh was sailing over the Fifty Fathom Flat
within sight of the promised land of Hindostan.
Had it been otherwise we should certainly have
had many notes from a profound observer and most
accomplished scholar on Arthur Wellesley. All
memory of the man has now died out, and we ven-
ture to state that there is not a single man alive
who recollects the Duke of Wellington in India.
Even His Highness Aga Khan Mehilati, the de-
scendant of the Old Man of the Mountain, the
hereditary chief and unrevealed Imam of the
Ismailis, upon whom sits so lightly the burden of
four score monsoons, remembers him not*;—so is
it with the Honourable Nusserwanjee Framjee,
the Nestor of the Parsees. Ten years ago the case
was different, but the “Blind Fury with the
* H. H. Aga Khan died in Bombay on the night of the 12th
April 1881.
23
258 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
abhorred shears” has cut the last link. Jadow-
roW, of Malegaon, came to Sir Bartle Frere in
1867, and pointing to the battlefield of Kirkee,
said, “The place is much changed since I was
here fifty years ago.” He bore arms when the
Duke was in Poona, in 1803. There is thus no
option to us except to deliver ourselves over to
conjecture, or be content with such things as we
have, in the shape of the miscellaneous scraps
which are furnished to us by the despatches and
letters of the Duke of Wellington.
THE DUKE'S TRIUMPHAL ENTRY INTO BOMBAY.
Be it known, then, that the Duke of Welling-
ton, otherwise Major General Wellesley, entered
Bombay on the 13th March, 1804. He came
fresh from the victories of Assaye and Argaum,
and Bombay did him all honour. The route by
which he entered the city is still visible to us,
and very much the same as it was then, except
that a structure here and there
“Battered and decayed
Lets in new light through chinks which Time has made.”
It stretched from the Dock-gate opposite the
old Court House to the old Secretariat, then
known as Government House. The course of
the procession was thus the Dock-head to Apollo
DUKE or wFLLINGTON IN BoMBAY. 259
Street, which was lined from end to end by all
the troops then in the garrison, and packed by a
dense mass of human beings, a sea of turbans,
with a sprinkling of European and Parsee topis,
far as the eye could reach, until it terminated at
the Cathedral and Bombay Green. The old
Court House had once (1776-84) been the re-
sidence of Governor Hornby, and was for its time
a palatial-looking building. The porch is a lofty
collonade surmounted by a balcony, which afford-
ed a splendid coigne of vantage, as it directly
faced the Dock archway, and enabled its oc-
cupants to catch, as he emerged, a first glimpse
of the illustrious stranger, the hero of Assaye.
We need scarcely ask if this verandah, on a day
such as this, was chockfull of the youth, beauty,
and fair hair of England. So, he looking at
them and they at him, the Duke, amid the roar
of cannon and the blare of trumpets, made his
way to Government House.
Great preparations had been made for his
reception, for it had been known for days that
he was to arrive from Panwell in the Governor’s
yacht. The Chamber of Commerce was then
inchoate, and the Town Council and Corporation
without form and void. Nevertheless a Mr. Hen-
shaw was voted to the chair, and commissioned
260 BOOK OF BOMBAY. .
to present an address signed by 123 non-official
Englishmen, we presume. The last tableaux are
the Duke, Jonathan Duncan, and Mr. Henshaw,
each rising in succession to speak on the great
question of the day, all very hot, and though en-
joying themselves, glad when the whole business
was terminated and gave way to a series of dinners,
balls, and theatrical representations. We may
here observe that the Duke was a close-shaven
man, as were all his contemporaries, Nelson,
Lake, Abercrombie, Mackintosh, and Malcolm.
The reign of the long-haired savages came in with
Sir Charles Napier, “ the bearded vision of
Sind.”
It was a big day—a burra-deen. Bombay, with
one bound, seemed to burst away from the clouds
of misfortune which had enveloped her; and it
was no wonder she sought relief, for storm and
fire and famine had done their worst, and her cup
of misery had been well migh filled to the brim. .
Five years had passed—and such five years.
The elements of Nature seemed to conspire with
the violence of man, and the century had dawned
amid gloom and disaster to the settlement. There
had been a great storm at the close of the mon-
soon of 1799, in which H. M. S. Resolution,
1,000 native craft, and 400 lives were lost in the
DUKE OF WELLINGTON IN BOMBAY. 261
harbour. Then a fire broke out in 1803, which
destroyed three-fourths of the Bazaar, Barracks,
Custom House, and many public buildings. In
1802-3, the clouds having refused to give their
rain, a famine raged” only equalled in inten-
sity by that of 1812; and in 1802 a domestic
incident threw the whole colony into mourning, the
Persian ambassador having been shot dead by
one of our own sepoys in the public streets.f
The period had been thus one of intensest
anxiety, fears within and fightings without. Had
not Nelson written Governor Duncan that if
Napoleon was successful in Egypt, Bombay would
come next 2 As each day dawned the flagstaff
on Malabar Point was narrowly watched and the
horizon seawards eagerly scanned. It will be
remembered that Tanna was then the outpost of
British dominion, and the outlook across the
creek was black and dismal, and blacker and
dismaller on the great plains of the Deccan
beyond the Western Ghauts. The farther you
went the worse it became. There was a court
* Rice was imported into Bombay, to the value of 50 lakhs, by
which there is no doubt that the lives of 50,000 human beings
were saved. — Mackintosh.
f They patched up such affairs easily in these days. One lakh
in presents, Rs. 50,000 in pensions, and the body sent in a ship of
war to Kerbella. It was afterwards remarked in the Shiraz
bâzaar that we might have ten ambassadors if we paid for them
at the same price.—Malcolm.
262 BOOK OF BOMBAY. .
at Poona and a court at Hyderabad. Bajee Rao
sits on the verandah of the Somwar Palace and
hears with delight the yells of the brother of
Holkar as he is being trampled to death by an
elephant,” and Holkar's vicegerent, Amrut
Rao, by way of reprisal, threatens to give over
Poona to plunder and burn it to ashes.
Sydenham, the Resident at the court of the
Nizam, considers it as “a sort of experiment to
determine with how little morality men can
associate together, and seems to think that the
most atrocious ruffians from the brothels and
massacres of Paris might here be teachers, and
even models, of virtue. Holkar had become so
besotted a drunkard as almost to have lost his
senses; after an excessive dose of cherry-brandy
he plucks the turbans from the heads of his
chiefs and beats them like the lowest slaves ;”f
and Scindia was so bad that the Duke of
Wellington, on 31st January, 1804, almost
driven to desperation by his conduct, wrote
Malcolm, then at his camp, “It will not be a
bad plan to bribe the prince as well as his min-
isters.”
This represents the rulers of the wide area of
* 1801. f Mackintosh.
DUKE OF WELLINGTON IN BOMBAY. 263
Mahratta dominion, but Peshwa, Scindia, Holkar,
and Nizam it was all the same. But we must not
ignore.
THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.
And our witnesses shall be two men of Euro-
pean reputation who had singular opportunities
of extending their observations in the Deccan
and Konkan at this period. We premise that
their report will not be a one-sided one,
neither biassed by senseless prejudice nor over-
weening indulgence. Neither of them disliked
the natives of this country. When Hormusjee
gave a masque ball Mackintosh was among the
revellers. When Dady was dying he handed
over to Mackintosh the care of his two sons, who
afterwards became merchants in Bombay. “I
have offered you peace, and you have chosen
war,” said the great Duke, and the words were
uttered by the same man who, on the field of
Assaye, sent for a havildar of the 4th Cavalry,
who had dashed among the enemy's horse and
bore away the standard, and then with a gentle
pat on the back said, Acha, havildar jemadar.
And a jemadar he was made. There was
no collusion, as Wellington and Mackintosh
never met nor corresponded in India. In-
264 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
deed, they were political opponents during their
lives. s”
The Duke of Wellington did not disguise from
himself or the public the means he had acquired,
or the capacity with which he was gifted, for
writing on the condition of the people of West-
ern India.
“No man,” he says, “has ever had so many op-
portunities of contemplating the subject in all its
parts, and possibly no man has ever adverted to it.
“There is not one of them that can be impli-
citly trusted.
“ Famine rages in the Deccan. Habits of
industry are out of the question, and men
must plunder for subsistence, be destroyed,
or starve; no law, no Civil Government, and
no army to keep plunderers in order—and no
revenue can be collected ; indeed, no inhabitant
can or will remain to cultivate, unless he is pro-
tected by an armed force stationed in his village.
“Five miles from Poona, a dreary waste over-
run by thieves.
“The only system of the Peshwa's Govern-
ment is that of a robber.
“The Peshwa is callous to everything, but
money and revenge.” .."
And on the march to Poona, “ except in
DUKE OF WELLINGTON IN BOMBAY. 265
one village not a human being was left
for a distance of 125 miles from Meritch to
Poona.”
So much for Wellington : now for Mackin-
tosh. “No police, no administration of jus-
tice, except such as the village system of
India supplies. It would be difficult to say
for what tax is paid, except it be to bribe
the sovereign not to murder or rob the in-
habitants.
“Carli to Tulligaum. The country is bare and
little cultivated, the road is lonely, and the whole
district seems unpeopled.
“Jelliall to Bejapore. For fourteen miles the
only living creatures that we saw were some
pretty paraquets, a partridge, a hare, and a herd.
of deer. Yet our road was through a country
that had been universally cultivated, and within
a few miles of what had been once one of the
most superb capitals of the East.
“The number of women enslaved and con-
demned to perpetual imprisonment in such
loathsome dungeons, without occupation or
amusement, without knowledge or accomplish-
ment, without the possibility of a good quality
which could rise so high as to deserve the
name of virtue, is, perhaps, the strongest in-
34 º -
266 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
stance of low or depraved tyranny that the world
exhibits.
“The insecurity of this country is not occa-
sional or temporary, but its usual and probably
perpetual state.
“In the dominions of the Peshwa, Nizam,
&c., they in reality exercise no functions
of Government except that of collecting the
revenue. In every other respect they throw
the reins on the horse's neck. In their do-
minions there is no police, no administration
of justice ; sovereignty is to them a perfect
sinecure.” *
This is what the people and country had come
to. The question now arises, why did we not
leave these besotted Governments to work out
their own destruction ? And this brings us to
a second question,
WELY WAS ARTEIUR WELLESLEY HERE 2
The answer is easy enough to both these
questions. The holders of the musnuds of
Western India were at this time brewing a
sharp poison for us to drink. When the treaty
of Bassein, restoring the Peshwa to Poona, in
1802, was signed, Holkar held up his hands and
said, “You have taken away my turban.” It
DUKE OF WELLINGTON IN BOMBAY. 267
was to prevent probable combinations among the
Mahratta powers, the end of which would have
been to have driven the English into the sea.
That was the reason why the Duke was here and
that Bombay was filled with joy and rejoicing in
March, 1804. The answer to the first question
is that we did not arrest the decay of these
Governments. They literally died from the
contempt of the native populations. Conceive
any man wishing to get back to such times | The
Duke, in February, 1803, was told by the Vice-
roy that his presence was wanted at Poona,
This brings us to
HIS CELEBRATED MARCH TO POONA. “
And the Duke shall be his own historian. “We
marched to Poona from Seringapatam, the dis-
* We are indebted to an eminent Bombay Civilian for the fol-
lowing, which clears up the topography of the Duke of Welling-
ton's famous march of 60 miles in 32 hours, from Baramati to
Poona, on 19th-20th April, 1803. With a force of 10,617 men, of
whom 1,709 were cavalry, he left General Stuart's Head-
quarters at Harihar on 9th March, and crossed the Tumbuddra
On 12th March. He reached Mirach on 3rd April, and appears
to have marched steadily thence towards Poona. Hearing on the
19th that Amrut Rao was suill near Poona, and that he was Sup-
posed to be about to burn the town, he marched on with his
cavalry—412 Europeans and 1,297 natives. The infantry followed,
reaching Poona, on 22nd. The route was by the “little Bhore
Ghaut,” a route often mentioned in the annals of 1800 to 1820. The
Ghaut is near the eastern end of the chain which runs eastward
from Singurh and Boleshwar, and before the construction of the
Dewa Bapdeo and Katraj Ghaut was the only practicable road
across that range of hills. Though superseded by the Bapdeo
and Dewa Ghauts for traffic to Poona by road the Ghaut is still
kept up, as it is on the line of communication between the Uroti
railway station and Saswad Jejuri and other places on the line
of the old Satara road.
268 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
tance being nearly six hundred miles, in the
worst season of the year, through a country
which had been destroyed by Holkar’s army,
with heavy guns, at the rate, upon an average,
of thirteen-and-a-half miles a day ; and halting
twelve days for orders, we arrived at Poona in
two months from the time we marched. On
this march we lost no draught cattle. I remain-
ed in the neighbourhood of Poona, in a country
which deserves the name of a desert, for six
weeks, and then marched with the train in the
same state. . . It has frequently been neces-
sary for the troops to march for many days to-
gether a distance of fifteen to twenty miles daily.
The heavy artillery always accompanied them.
Upon one occasion I found it necessary to march
a detachment sixty miles in thirty hours, and the
ordnance and provision carriages, drawn by the
Company’s bullocks, accompanied them.
The number of cattle which have died are really
not greater than it would have been at the graz-
ing ground.” He is now on the march to
Ahmednagar, Assaye, and Argaum with the
carte blanche' which was given to him by his
brother, the Viceroy, to do, in fact, anything
he pleased, either offensive or defensive, the how
and when being left entirely to himself. Would
DUKE OF WELLINGTON IN BOMBAY. 269
any of these victories have been won if the
telegraph had then been in operation ? We
may be certain that more cattle would have
died.
DUEL ; DISCIPLINE AT NAGAR.
Wellington was glad to take the 78th
Regiment of Highlanders with him. Malcolm’s
feeling was that their Gaelic address would
have an excellent effect on the enemy Our
readers will recollect that this was the regi-
ment whose pipers enlivened Poona in 1879,
and we may add also the Scots dinner of that
year. The following incident occurred before
the storm and capture of Ahmednagar on
12th August, 1803. Captain Grant, a young
officer of the 78th, gave a party to his friends
in camp, and asked Captain Brown’s piper
to amuse them, so that they might listen to
the pibrochs and dance to the reels. Captain
Brown was an old man and an Englishman, and it
would have been no compliment to have asked
him. Nevertheless, his piper having been asked
without his knowledge, he took umbrage at this,
and at evening parade addressed Grant. Grant
replied that he would send for the piper as often
as he pleased. “Sir, you are but a boy, and
270 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
nobody but a boy would tell me so.” Then
came the dénouement. A friend was called in,
who recommended a challenge, which was accept-
ed, and in the duel Brown fell dead. General
Wellesley turned the friend out of camp, “ that
such a wretch might not have the opportunity
of sharing in the honours of an army which he
had thus disgraced.” Poor Grant was in a terri-
ble state at the storm, and under arrest as he
was, and unarmed, he rushed off the first man
at the top of the ladder, from which he fell a
corpse.*
NATIVE OPINION OF THE DURCE.
Gockla, a Mahratta residing in camp with a
body of horse, wrote thus to his friends:–
“These English are a strange people and
their General a wonderful man ; they came
here in the morning, looked at the Pettah wall,
walked over it, killed all the garrison, and
returned to breakfast. What can withstand
them P’’
TRAITS.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that
the Duke of Wellington in Western India was
* Abridged from Maacwell's Wellington.
DUICE OF WELLINGTON IN BOMBAY. 271
the soldier only, or that he merely changed the
soldier's garb for that of the diplomatist to write
on mighty themes. We have seen that the con-
dition of the people question was not beneath his
notice. He, possibly, was the first man who
wrote on the philosophy of an Indian famine ;
and it would astonish some of our administrators
now-a-days to find that their pet schemes and
original ideas have been anticipated by him.
He contributed something to banking by his
celebrated saying that “ high interest means
bad security.” We have no comments of his on
foreign exchange, and we suspect that trade in
Bombay during these years was so harried that
sterling bills were driven out of sight. But
no cambist or inland banker in the matter of
coins or hoondies could catch him asleep. An
unfortunate military man in Poona relegated
to conduct the finances received such a castiga-
tion that he must have remembered it to the
day of his death. “It is useless to write any
more on the subject. Should bills be again drawn
at Poona, the Government of Bombay will
furnish you with an account of the rates of
exchange at which they draw their bills and
you can regulate your rates accordingly.” On
the receipt of this the Poona sowcars became
272 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
choop and their countenances fell. He could
thus be pleasant and unpleasant ; “ lofty and
sour to those who loved him not, to those
that loved him sweet as summer.” But not
always.
“When in Bombay I had much conversa-
tion with mercantile gentlemen there.” Yes,
he did not think this beneath him ; not a
ceremonious or “how d'ye do ’’ acquaintance,
but redolent, as in Charles Forbes’s case, with
much talk about money, wine, and horses.
He had a great regard for Forbes. The house
had been established some twenty years pre-
viously. “ Forbes,” he says, “ is a bad
judge of horses.” But Forbes had money, and
this was what the Government at this parti-
cular time stood in much need of. The Gov-
ernment had sandalwood in a growing state,
trees we mean ; in fact, what Charles II. roughly
termed “an excrescence of the earth provided
by God for the payment of debts,” which was
evidently the view taken of them by the Govern-
ment. Forbes could pay the money now—five
lakhs, ten lakhs; it was all the same to him—and
he did pay it, and cut the wood on the Manga-
lore coast afterwards. So we find in the last
letter which the Duke wrote to Jonathan Dun-
DUKE OF WELLINGTON IN BOMBAY. 273
can, Governor of Bombay, before leaving India,
the very words we were prepared to expect :
“ 27th February, 1805. Mr. Forbes’s sandal-
Wood business will be settled to his satisfaction.”
He had time to note when in Bombay that it
excelled all other places in India for making cart-
Wheels, to which the late Kandahar campaign bore.
witness. He had time to attend a garden-party
at Manockjee Cursetjee's father's house, which
you can still see. He had time to groan over his.
lumbago, and fear that he “would walk like old
Pomeroy during the remainder of my life.” He
went into convulsions over the jokes, written,
spoken, or practical, of “mad Malcolm ;” and we
can solemnly aver that there is a tamarind-tree at
the foot of the Seeree road under which he cursed
the Bombay Government, for doing which he feared.
he might be burned in effigy on the Bombay
Green. We are bound to believe that he clomb
the Siri (ladder) and gave an obolus to the Fakir,
imago mortis, and was rewarded by a glorious,
view from Malabar Hill, minus steamers,
cotton-mills, and all that sort of thing. Such
was Wellington in all his phases. To one he
writes, “ Give him a hint that I am in the
habit of hanging.” To another, “I shall send
to Mrs. Stevenson in two days some cabbages
35
274, |BOOK OF BOMBAY.
and celery-plants, and in about a week her
rose-trees.”
So various he,
In all his parts the world’s epitome.
HERE ARE TWO NOTABILIA.
“I know but one receipt for good health in
this country, and that is to live moderately, to
drink little or no wine, to use exercise, to keep
the mind employed, and, if possible, to keep in
good humour with the world ;” and he adds,
“ the last is the most difficult, for, as you have
often observed, there is scarcely a good-tempered
man in India.”
When the clouds of the monsoon of 1804 were
beginning to form he found that 5,000 of the
soldiers would be in rags during the monsoon.
He solved the difficulty by giving every man his
piece of cloth and making each his own tailor.
WAS THE DUIKE AT MATHERAN ?
We are afraid not; at his “ camp at Chowke ’’
he devoured much foolscap and several lengthy
despatches of great moment are thus dated.
The question becomes this—whether a man in
full power of body and mind, and embued with a
strong love of scenery such as Killarney, could
have resisted paying it a visit when it was, as it
DUKE OF WELLINGTON IN BOMBAY. 275
were, at his very elbow. It can be argued on
both sides. It was the month of May : that was
bad or good; a stiffer pull then than in any other
IIIonth, but Matheran has then a cooler climate
and offers a greater contrast to the heated plains
below. One of two things is certain : if he went,
he destroyed a pair of Wellington boots ; if he
remained at Chowke, he had a hot night of it
on 18th May. We could forgive his staying
away if he had only squelched the maternal
progenitor of that scoundrel at the mention of
whose name the world still grows pale, and who
must have in 1804 been making mud pies some-
where about Chowke.
There was no want of roads. There was “ the
old Chowke road,” up which fifty years afterwards
an elephant carried Lord Elphinstone from the
Rambagh to the summit, and there was the
breakneck ascent at One Tree Hill, where he
could have stuck his feet into the notches cut
out of the rock (he was not a stout party) and
been rewarded by a glorious view from the
summit.
He would have seen a plain as big as Esdraelon
bounded by the Ghauts, and at his feet the
innumerable tents of which his camp consisted,
outside one of which were picquetted his two
276 - HOOK OF BOMBAY.
horses, Pat and Diomed* quietly munching
their gram. He would have heard the bulbul
and the golden Oriole, and seen the so-called bird
of paradise with its long tail, flitting like a
gleam of sunlight from glade to glade. And he
would have drunk from those perennial fountains
that babble up from the stony valley of the
Bund. He would have seen the Dungur wending
his way slowly into umbrageous depths to
sacrifice a cock at the black stone which he
believes came down from heaven.f
In vain with lavish kindness
The gifts of God are strewn,
The heathen in his blindness
Eows down to wood and stone—
Yesterday, to-day, but not for ever. And if
he had remained long enough, he might have
bid a final adieu to the lumbago in his back and
Dr. Inverarity.
* Diomed “kicked ” at Assaye, but Malcolm fell in with him
afterwards and bought him for the Duke at Rs. 250.
+ Dr. Wilson used to remark that there were some grounds for
their belief. His opinion was that both this and the Black Stone
of Mecca were originally meteoric Stones.
DUKE OF welIINGTON IN BOMBAY. 277
THE DUKE OF WELLIN GTON'S BOMBAY
RESIDENCE.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE “BOMBAY GAZETTE.”
SIR,--The writer of a note in your issue of
Saturday anent the site of the house in which
the illustrious Duke of Wellington resided while
in Bombay has awakened in me some dormant
memories of by-gone days.
Upwards of six-and-thirty years ago I had the
honour of being an occupant of the same house.
My landlord was Mr. Cursetjee Manockjee, now
long deceased, who was the father of our worthy
townsman, Mr. Manekji Kharsedji. (You will
please note that, in compliance with the require-
ments of modern scientific literature, I am com-
pelled to spell the son’s name secundum artem.)
For the benefit of the curious in such matters
and historians in general permit me further to
relate that the house, which was called Surrey
Cottage, stood at about half-way up the now non-
existent eastern brow of Malabar Hill. The ex-
cavated débris of that part of the hill, as many of
your readers are aware, was utilized some years
ago for the purposes of the Back Bay reclamation.
The house comprised a somewhat spacious and
lofty hall, with wings and long verandas at the
278 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
sides and back part. In front there was a porch,
to which led two carriage-ways from different
directions of the large compound. One of them
passed by the still-existing stable near the siri.
Your correspondent remarks that its walls are
standing. He might have added that it has a
roof, and that it continues to be used as a stable.
The hall commanded a nice view of Back Bay
and a portion of Girgaum, also the Esplanade and
the Fort. The Duke, with his eagle eye, must
have more than once, I presume, scanned the
scene with some interest. Of an evening one of
the most striking sights that met the eyes of my-
self and my friends, as we sat on the landing of
the tall flight of stone steps which led up to the
hall from the porch, was the long line of lugubri-
ous flaring fires which burned at the Hindu cre-
mation-ground, then not screened, as now, by
the high wall on the west, or sea face.
Cholera was frequently rampant in those times.
Arthur Crawford (for whom I trust a statue at
least is looming in the not distant future) was
most probably going to school at that period.
A good many years had to elapse before he and
his sanitary army invaded the quondam stinking
lames and alleys and bazaars of this city, and
cleared away the feculent accumulations of ages,
DUKE OF WELLINGTON IN BOMBAY. 279
thus removing the fertile sources of manifold dire
diseases. By night the fires on the then beach
constituted a very correct and significant index
of the prevalent mortality, which was in propor-
tion to their number. -
Whether the Duke’s nocturnal rest was ever
disturbed at Surrey Cottage by adventures with
reptiles I cannot say, not having heard. It was
certainly a Snaky domicile. On the first night
of my occupancy thereof I was rather startled, on
entering my bedroom, to find it in possession of
two or three young snakes, which were gliding
playfully along the sides of the room. They had
evidently been enjoying a right of usance for
some time previously, and seemed quite unap-
prehensive of the summary eviction which I had
to exercise. The polished chumam floors of the
verandas were so cool in warm weather that the
neighbouring snakes and serpents (cobras
amongst the lot) came and occasionally reposed
thereon, as though they feared no disturbance.
I remember having been suddenly called up one
morning by a friend residing with me to witness
the execution of a splendid rock snake, near seven
feet in length, which lay extended on the floor
of the western veranda, taking a cool snooze. A
charge of small shot which my friend discharged
280 Book of BoMBAY.
at its head from his fowlingpiece consigned it to
a permanent slumber.
Mr. Cursetjee Manockjee knew the Duke per-
sonally, and had supplied his army with provi-
sions—principally rice, if I am not oblivious of
what he told me. He always spoke to me most
enthusiastically of the Duke, whom he regarded
as a perfect hero. But poor old Cursetjee had
his troubles, and they were multitudinous. Out
of his transactions with the Indian Government
there arose a mighty lawsuit brought by him
against the Honourable East India Company.
In the midst of his eulogies of the Duke he could
not help bitterly reverting to his case and his
grievances. He had fortified himself with the
opinions of great lawyers, one of whom was the
eminent advocate Chitty. All of them were in
his favour. Equity and right upheld his claims,
but alas! he could not succeed against powerful
John Company, who, however, offered him a
liberal compromise. But Cursetjee had some-
thing of the Iron Duke's nature in him. He
would not give in, and was game to the last.
Dec. 13. * F.
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE,
36
283
CHAPTER, XII.
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE.
SIR. EDWARD Col. EBRook has advertised for
letters and papers of Mountstuart Elphinstone, to
assist him in the preparation of his life, upon which
he is engaged, and which, we trust, will soon be
given to the public.
In 1861 he presented a memoir to the Asiatic
Society in London, and in 1860 Dr. Wilson read a
paper on the same subject to the Asiatic Society in
Bombay, to both of which we are indcbted for
most of the information we at present possess of
the life and labours of this illustrious man. We
may add also Grant Duff’s history of the Mahrat-
tas and the masterly minutes which Elphinstone
wrote in India, and his paper in 1831 on Indian
Policy, which attracted universal attention. Cole-
brook kncw Elphinstone intimatcly during the
last twenty years of his life, and is well fitted for
the task; so we have every reason to believe
284 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
that we will at length obtain a just estimate of
the character and career of one whose name is
known and revered throughout the whole of
Western India. w
His will, we understand, debars the publica-
tion of his diary, but as Sir John Kaye has al-
ready given us a few quotations from it, this pro-
hibition may be ignored. We all know what a
Zest even the trifles of a day give, for example, to
the Bombay lives of Malcolm and Mackintosh.
Why do people not burn their diaries, if they
object to their publication ? This was Mrs.
Hough’s plan, and she did right.
The great outcry of biographers no-a-days is
“ no letters.” But in his case the letters are
voluminous, for Elphinstone was a man who lived
before the age of telegrams and penny posts, and
kept up the habit of lengthy correspondence to
the last days of his life on all sorts of subjects,
principally Indian and political, from which we
may now fairly claim a full exhibition of the
opinions and principles by which he was guided
during a long and most eventful period in the
history of British India.
ITEMS.
The fourth son of Lord Elphinstone, some time
Governor of Edinburgh Castle, Mountstuart
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE. 285
Elphinstone was born in 1779. His cousin tells
us he was an idle dog in his youth.
Principally under tutors, some time at the
High School of Edinburgh, he sailed for Bengal
in 1795. Placed in the diplomatic service under
Barry Close at Pooma, 1801. With Arthur
Wellesley, 1803. Commissioner in Berar, 1804.
In 1808-10 he was with the Embassy to Kabul;
1810-17, Resident at Poona; 1817-19 Commis.
sioner; and 1819-27 Governor of Bombay. He
spent the rest of his time travelling, but mostly
in retirement, in England, and died on the 20th
November, 1859.
* HIS POPULARITY
Is indicated even in 1881 by Elphinstone Col-
lege, Elphinstone Schools, Circles, lodges, roads,
tanks, and points; a Revenue Commissioner—
Robertson—bears his honoured name—a name
also given by the historian of the Mahrattas to
the son who is among us and is known as Mount-
stuart Blphinstone Grant Duff.
j PORTRAIT.
Mr. Elphinstone was in the forty-first year of
his age when in 1820 he became Governor of
Bombay, and being a man of temperate and active
habits, and fine matural constitution, was in the
286 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
very prime of manhood, and in the fullest vigour
and health. He was close on six feet high, but
a slight stoop made him appear somewhat less tall
than he was. With this trivial imperfection as
an exception, his figure was a noble one ; his
countenance, as immortalized by the chisel of
Chantrey, was in nature’s most pleasing mould.
It was oval and somewhat thin ; the lofty fore-
head and deep-seated, calm, reflective eye mark-
ing the man of talent. His nose was prominent,
and slightly aquiline: it was thin, as were the
cheeks and lips ; his colour inclining to pale ; his
skin pure and transparent; his hair was light, soft,
and silky. His usual expression was that of
sweetness, benevolence, placidity, and repose.
When excited his whole countenance lighted up
with a glow of warmth, his bright eye gleamed
out, and his thin lips becoming compressed,
showed, though placid, he was far from inani-
mate—though unusually tranquil, how easily he
could be awakened into energy and fire. His
hands were soft, white, and beautifully delicate.
He was, indeed, the most distinguished and the
most popular of the Governors of Bombay, and
one of the most able and upright statesmen of
modern times. ' This, we believe, is Dr. Buist’s
pen-and-ink sketch. It is that of a man of gentle
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE, 287
blood, built up by ages of ease and cultivation.
This is not the burly form of Malcolm, the
farmer’s son, nor these the rugged features
and gnarled and warped forehead of Colin
Campbell.
POLITICAL.
Elphinstone was one of a noble band whom
Edinburgh sent forth at the close of the
eighteenth century; there was Horner, Mur-
ray, Brougham, Jeffrey, Mackintosh, and
Llphinstone. These three last were hot re-
publicans in their teens,—a garb soon to be
exchanged for more sober livery, the blue
and yellow of the Edinburgh Review. There
seems to have been a doubt in the king’s
mind, when Mackintosh in 1804, who was
then 38, was being sent out as Recorder of
Bombay, that the opinions of the author of
Vindiciae Gallica were too pronounced, but, on
being assured on this point, he shrewdly observ-
ed: “A man may be allowed to change his
opinions; his principles never.” Elphinstone,
when a boy, sung Ca Ira and the Marseillais, and
his young friends in India on his arrival—by way
of burlesque, we suppose—presented him with a
tricolor cockade and cap of liberty. “He had
288 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
no stereotyped prejudices * but the early
views which he imbibed, though experiencing
many modifications, never left him, and the
Whig peeps out at intervals to the end of
his life.
By his accidental meeting with Mackintosh in
Bombay in 1811, and afterwards, Elphinstone,
though a man of independent thought and action,
must have been brought to some extent under
the sway of his intellect, which was irresistible
and dominated all within its reach. He it was
who urged upon him to come before the world
and publish his book on Kabul. But under this
head, and as illustrative of the strength of
Elphinstone’s mind or the tenacity of early con-
victions, it is a curious fact to note that, living
in so close proximity with the Duke of Welling-
ton, and sharing with him an entire campaign, at
the very outset of his career, and with a mind
apparently so flexible, the pupil did not, like
Malcolm, fall in with the Conservative views of
the great captain. He did not do so, and did
not suffer by it. It was George Canning, the
author of the Antjacobin, who in 1819 recom-
mended him to the post of Bombay Governor,
and it was Peel's Government that offered him
* Dr. Wilson.
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE. 289
the Viceroyalty in 1843. And when he became
the Nestor of Indian politics, two Governors-
General of different shades of politics sought his
society before proceeding to their Government,
as the greatest authority for the East.
ECCENTRICITIES.
If Elphinstone had lived in the middle ages,
he would at one time of his life have been
imprisoned like Roger Bacon, or burned for
heresy or witchcraft. There was something eerie
about him—what the world or the vulgus of it
considers uncanny. Once he lived a gloomy and
a solitary life. Of women he seldom or mever
speaks, and neither he nor his nephew Lord
Elphinstone, Governor (1858-59), were marrying
men”. Wine was poison to him, and he may
* The story goes that Lord Elphinstone's appearance and
IſlannerS Were SO º;; as to touch the heart—it must
surely, if at all, have been the outer cuticle—of the Most Exalted
Personage in the realm. In 1839 he was not a stripling but a
man of 32. But never mind. The dates harmonise wonderfully.
Dates are wonderful things. The great plague in London and
the acquisition of Bombay took place the same year. So did the
ueen's marriage and Lord Elphinstone's appointment as GOV-
€rnor of Madras, or more correctly 1840 and 1839 ; and for
that matter, tradition informs us that Tenterden Steeple and
the Goodwin Sands came into existence the same year. What
the year was deponent sayeth not. , Moreover, there , was a
song actually said to have been written by his Lordship de-
ploring his cruel fate. You may still occasionally, when Some
Afghan business is going on, hear an old colonel on receipt
of his marching orders humming a Snatch—
“I’ll off to the wars again.”
. The song, it turns out, was not written by Lord Elphinstone at
all, but by G. H. Bayley, born 1797, died 1839, the author of
37
290 Book or BoMBAY.
be claimed as nearly a total abstainer. He
discarded all superfluous articles of dress, and all
superfluous articles of food. Instead of a siesta,
which Mackintosh carried with him to the sofas
of England, he merely rested his head on his
hands, closed his eyes, and with his elbows on
the table, slept the sleep of the just. He gave
up the use of beds. . It was preposterous in a
grown up man in full possession of his faculties,
mental and physical, to lay himself down prone
in inglorious slumber like the beasts of the stall.”
He shook himself out of his chair at the
“Would I were a Butterfly ’’ and many other songs. As it
belongs to the Elphinstone memorabilia, we give it.
I’ll hang my harp on the willow tree,
I’ll off to the wars again ;
My peaceful home has no charms for me,
The battlefield no pain.
The lady I love will soon be a bride,
With a diadem on her brow :
Oh why did she flatter my boyish pride,
She is going to leave me now.
She took me away from my Warlike Lord,
And gave me a silken suit ;
I thought no more of my master's sword
When I played on my mistress's lute.
She seemed to think me a boy above
Her pages of low degree :
Oh ! had I but loved with a boyish love,
It would have been better for me.
Then I’ll hide in my breast every selfish care,
I’ll flush my pale cheek with wine ;
When smiles awake the bridal pair,
I’ll hasten to give them mine ;
I’ll º and sing, though my heart may bleed
And I’ll walk in the festive train,
And if I survive it I’ll mount my steed,
And I’ll off to the wars again ;
And if I survive it I’ll mount my steed,
And I’ll off to the wars again.
Many years after this he was asked by a friend the reason
why. He promptly replied, “Because I was a fool.” *
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE. 29]
unearthly hour of 4 a.m. to read the Antigone
of Sophocles, when Malcolm, with the “ Deil’s
picture buiks” before him at Non parell, was not
even wondering whether it was time for his
guests to go or stay. Did he, like Plimsol, con-
sider the palanquin, “a glorified coffin P’’ He
delighted to walk on dizzy precipices, with the
sound of falling water beneath him, and watch
the perturbation of the aides-de-camp in follow-
ing his example.* He delighted to investi-
gate the manners and customs of the natives, by
roaming incog. during the night, like the Duke
of Sutherland, through the bazaars and fort of
Bombay ; and once, anxious to experience a new
sensation, he was seen on camel-back at midnight,
bobbing up and down in the darkness, an ex-
perience which Albert Smith describes “like
sitting in an armchair on the top of a hansom
cab. -
HIS HISTORY OF INDIA
Is his magnum opus. While every one admires
the zeal which enabled him with much care,
research, and accuracy to bring together so great
* There is a tradition at the foot of Torna, that a late mus-
cular Governor who ascended it, found himself on the top without
any companions. Discretion, however, is sometimes the better
part of valour, and his followers need not be ashamed “where
braver hearts have failed.”
292 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
an amount of information in a form so contin-
uous and compact, it is a subject of universal
regret that he did not prosecute the history of
British India. This book can only be looked
upon as an instalment of a great work which his
mind foreshadowed, but which failing health, a
sense of weariness, or langour, the advice of
friends, or the callousness of critics—for though
he was indifferent, he was not insensible to
human applause—prevented him completing. Or
was it the glamour which the appearance of
Macaulay’s essays on Clive and Hastings (where-
in he marshals these heroes on a field of the
cloth of gold) threw over all that generation ?
Whatever the cause, he was bowled away from
the subject, and never returned to it again ; and
the loss is irreparable. For wherein lies the
significance of all his labour, if it is not to
antedate our times and prepare the reader for
the coming day when English rule should put
all authority under its feet P What is the his-
tory of India to us if it has no connection with
Europe P And you may go back, if you like, to
the expedition of Alexander the Great. So when
we read of Tuglak and Mahmood Begurra, or
wade through the annals of Timour or Baber,
they seem to us no more than the fights of the
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE. 293
kites and the crows, compared with the acts and
deeds of the race which rescued India from their
oppression.
GOVERNORS OF BOMBAY.
There is not a Governor of Bombay but
some evil thing has been said of him. Sir
John Child was the brother of him who
founded the first private bank in London, that of
Child and Co., where Charles II. kept his ac-
count, and he was accused of malversation of the
Cathedral funds.” Vaux was a traitor. Bartho-
lomew Harris and Thomas Hodges were in league
with astrologers.f Of Hornby, whom we have
always considered a fine old fellow, we have seen
accusations of greed, lust of gain, and that he
* Hamilton.
+ Owington and James Forbes.
NOTE ON SIR JOHN CHILD.—He was educated at Rajapor in
Rutnageeree, from the age of 10 to 18, with his uncle, Mr. Goodshaw,
Chief of that Factory, and being a smart boy, discovered that he
carried on private trade with the funds of the Company, and in-
formed upon him Goodshaw was cashiered, and he at 24 “ was
laird himself, ” that is, chief of the said factory. His brother's
family in England became not only rich, but allied with noble
houses; and it is on record that Josiah Child’s widow—he who
was chairman of the East India Company, and senior partner of
Child and Co.—survived until 1735. This was the acme of the
Child family, for eleven dukes and duchesses used to ask her
blessing, dear old boodie / and, it was reckoned, fifty great
families would go into mourning for her. Hear that I and this
also- that no man can tell where Sir John Child’s grave is. The
when he died was 1690, but I have not discovered his place of
sepulture in India. Probably it was one of the fine mausolea
which were demolished at Mendham's burying-ground, near the
gº on the eye of the opening of Sonapore in 1760. When
Sir John Child died the Cathedral walls were standing fifteen
feet high, though a la bonne, hewre he could not go there. The
Bombay Cathedral was not for this Child.
294, BOOK OF BOM BAY.
was anything but a gentleman.* Jonathan
Duncan was a Scotsman. No harder thing could
be said of a man in India in the end of the eigh-
teenth century, for a Scotsman was branded, and,
like Cain, wandered over the face of the earth.
But he was more : a Brahmanised Scotsman,
whatever that may mean, and old “ havering
bodie” who had lost his head. Even Nepean
was a nipcheese and had been a purser in the
Navy, and the more credit to him. Malcolm
was a fool ; but not such a fool. Sir Robert
Grant immortalised Love-grove by making the
sluices and main drains' and singing his
hymns on the battlements of Poorendhur. Never
mind; his hymns will be sung in Anglican cathe-
dral and Methodist meeting-house when you and
I are forgotten. Even Gerald Aungier, the first
and greatest of our Conscript fathers, the almost
impeccable Aungier, is taken to task by the Rev.
Mr. Anderson of Colaba as if his religious phra-
seology savoured of insincerity. O thou Aungier,
be not righteous overmuch.|
RELIGIOUS.
Now though Elphinstone was not charged with
* Donald Campbell, 1783.
f Wellington Despatches.
# Stocqueler.
i Oriental Christian Spectator, 1838.
| Ander80n's Western India.
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE. 295
any of these things, he was not allowed to leave
Bombay unscathed. And it must be confessed
that there was something about his clear, mirror-
like mind that attracted the basilisk eye and
breath of detraction. .
A breath may make it as a breath hath made,
So one fine morning, when his sky seemed per-
fectly unclouded, a little speck, no bigger than a
man's hand, appeared on the horizon, and the
words “doubter, sceptic, and unbeliever * were
whispered by a field officer—and printed. It so
happened that in 1825, shortly before his death,
Bishop Heber was guest in Bombay for two
months of Mountstuart Elphinstone. He it was
who sang—
From many an ancient river,
From many a palmy plain,
They call us to deliver
k The land from error's chain.
And this was one of the errors he sought to deli-
ver the land from. He left on record that in all
essential points Elphinstone’s views were doctri-
nally correct, and that he had done more for Chris-
tianity than any other Governor had ever at-
tempted. It was of little avail where most need-
ed. Thirty-three years after this, when Elphin-
296 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
stone died, an eminent journalist* in London
wrote : “His life closed in philosophic beauty
and Christian repose.” The editor of the journal
in which it appeared was taken to task, and the
whole question had to be gone into de novo.
There is an Apostolical succession, and though
JBishop Heber was dead, Dr. Wilson was alive ;
and when in 1860 he appeared before the Asiatic
Society in Bombay with a paper on Elphinstone
and his services, he took good care to tell his
hearers that Elphinstone’s respect for religion
was exactly as intimated by Bishop Heber, and
mentioned by the way that he had been a contri-
butor to the Bible Society, was a friend to the
Scottish Mission, and on several occasions had
granted plots of land to the Americans. The
Doctor adds—“ as shown in their annual reports.”
But why do we speak of such things 2 Were not
the same tactics employed by a coterie in Edin-
burgh in 1868, in the case of the removal of a
renowned principal from Poona, and when the
appeal was made to Bombay, wisdom was justi-
fied of her children f And did not the same old
man whose bones now lie in our Scotch kirkyard
again raise his right arm, and by one telegram
silence for ever the tongues of the malefactors,
* William Jordan.
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE. 297
and vindicate the cause of truth and righteous-
ness?
CHARACTER AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS.
If Elphinstone had been a Roman, he would
have been the Marcus Aurelius of our school
day’s something of the soldier, much of the
student, and a great deal of the stoic. Did not
the Duke of Wellington, after witnessing his
bearing at the battle of Assaye, tell him that he
had mistaken his profession and Ought to have
been a soldier? When Bajee Rao from his palace
window at Parbutty saw the last of the Mahrattas
disappear behind the hills of Gunnesh Khind, he
knew whose was the hand that caused their dis-
appearance. No one could guess that under
such a mild exterior there was concealed so much
firmness and determination. But it was there.
When Commissioner at Poona, a conspiracy was
detected, consisting of Brahmins and the most
desperate of the military class. Elphinstone
immediately blew away the ringleaders from the
guns. Sir Evan Napean was then Governor of
Bombay, and, alarmed at his hardihood, advised
him strongly to ask the Governor-General for an
Act of Indemnity, which he indignantly rejected.
“If I have done wrong I ought to be punished;
38
298 BOOK OF BOM BAY,
if I have done right, I don’t want any Acts of
Indemnity.” He had some terrible nights at
Poona—the memory of one still remains. And
we have the words of the great Canning that
where other master minds failed he foiled the
chicanery and machinations of Bajee Rao at every
hand.
When he arrived in England, he tells us with
characteristic humility that when in conversation
with the men of his day he invariably soon found
himself out of his depth, and to remedy this he
would retire for several months at a time to a
roadside inn and pursue his studies with all the
ardour and perseverance of a young scholar.
Long ere this he was familar with Persian and
Hindustami, French and Italian, and with Latin,
and when over fifty he perfected himselfin Greek.
One fact ought not to be omitted in his Indian
days: his devotion to horsemanship and the
chase. He had but one pace on horeback, and
that was a hand gallop, and, like many other
Governors, had a bad fall and broke his collar-
bone. He became an active member of the
Poona Hunt, and was often seen among a group
of eager sportsmen in the grey of the morning
after the jackal. But pig was his delight. The
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE. 299
wild boar of Scotland had been displayed on the
armorial bearings of the Elphinstones ages before
the name of India had been heard in the Caledo-
nian forests. So his ancestors having sworn a
feud against the gruesome beast, he transferred
it from the banks of the Carron to the Mootha
Moola, and went at him with a will.
The bristly boar
In infant gore
Wallows beneath the thorny shade.
He had always a native shikaree in his camp,
and whenever he brought kubóer Elphinstone
proclaimed a holiday, and it was not his fault if
he had not the first spear. A young dragoon—
Cooper—was much chagrined that he could not
take a spear. Elphinstone mounted him on one
of his best horses, which laid the young soldier
alongside the hog, and he delivered his spear.
“You have won your spurs nobly,” said Elphin-
stone, and made him a present of the horse.
And we have seen somewhere that in old age
at Hookwood, when his eye was dim and his
natural force abated, the presence of a young
friend from India would kindle him into anima-
tion over some old, old story of “ the boar, the
boar, the mighty boar.” In Bombay we are told
that though he was surrounded by young men
300 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
he never suffered the slightest indecorum, and if
any one after dinner indulged in a double en-
tendre he would not say anything, but pushing
back his chair, broke up the party. He left the
bulk of his moderate fortune to his nephew,
Lord Elphinstone, who survived him only a few
months. They were both buried at Limpsfield
in Surrey. - *
BIOGRAPHICAL.
No man has so peculiarly identified himself, and
for so long a time, with the history of Western
India. Elphinstone was in Poona in 1801, the
year that Bajee Rao put to death. Wittojee, the
brother of Holkar, by dragging him at the foot
of an elephant, and he was in full possession of
his faculties when in 1858 he heard from his
nephew, Lord Elphinstone, an account of the
Indian mutiny. He was present at Bassein in
1802 at the signing of the famous treaty. He
went through the whole campaign of 1803 with
the Duke : Ahmednugger, Gawilgur, Argaum,
and Assaye. He it was in 1808 who first brought
to Europe the knowledge of Afghanistan—that
country which has twice during the last forty
years shrouded so many families in gloom and
sorrow. As Commissioner in Poona (1810 to
1817), he foiled the machinations of Bajee Rao,
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE. 301
and where Malcolm was hoodwinked, tore away
the mask and revealed the enemy of England. He
was not terrified by seeing his house, the English
Residency, at the Sungum in flames, his library
and everything he had except the clothes on his
back burned to ashes. He emerged a hero from
the glare of the conflagration, and history has
blazoned the name of Kirkee on his shield of
arms. He settled the Deccan. When he first came
to Poona the province was overrun by banditti,
and the land around its suburbs could not be let
for rent. Look at it now. In 1821 the President
was able to write of his Government : “ It has
repelled predatory invasion, restrained intestine
disorder, administered equal and impartial jus-
tice, and has almost extirpated every branch
of exaction and oppression.” His Govern-
ment of Bombay (1819 to 1827) was nearly fault-
less; his efforts for the education of the natives
can never be forgotten, for even should the two
great structures which bear his name in Bombay
crumble to dust by the decay of time or by
human or elemental violence, his name will re-
main as that of a great, a just, and a true Gov-
ernor, who was content to do the work of a part,
when the Government of the whole of India
* Minute on Khandeish.
302 BOOK OF BOM BAY.
lay before him, and who with the peerage of
England within his reach preferred to live and
die an untitled scion of the mobility of Scotland.
His statue is placed in St. Paul’s, where lie the
bones of his great friend and master, the Duke
of Wellington,
SIR JOHN MALCOLM.
305
CHAPTER XIII.
SIR JOHN MALCOLM.
PRELIMINAERY.
THE time has now come when the fame of Sir
John Malcolm must rest upon books, either books
written by himself or the records that remain of
his life and doings. There may be still men in
Bombay who remember him, and the sough of
him may still be heard. But tradition is an
uncertain monitor, and must soon give up the
ghost, leaving us to fall back on the written
letter that remaineth. At Mahableshwur, the
loved names of Charlotte, Amelia, Kate and
Olympia, wife and daughters, have been written
by Malcolm on the everlasting hills, and his
noble statue still looks down upon us as we enter
the portals of the Asiatic Society. But these
memorials are local and perishable. Chantrey
deals with the outer framework of the man, and
39
306 HOOK OF BOMBAY,
a magnificent framework it is, leaving untouched
the story of his life. Where Chantrey ends
History begins, and the divine chisel shapes the
block from Burnfoot into a glorious body, not
indeed without spot or wrinkle, but beyond the
power of marble to express or delineate.
CALE COUNTRY.
“ Noo Jock, my man, be sure whan youre awa,
ye kaim yer heid and keip yer face clean. If ye
dimma, ye’ll jist be sent back agen.” Thus mora-
lised his old nurse, while combing his hair for the
last time ere he left Burnfoot. He remembered
the words didn’t he 7–aye for many a day re-
tailed at camp fires, from Madras to Ispahan,
where “ the laugh was ready chorus.” There is
a world of hard philosophy in the old crone’s
observations, and it is not for nothing the Scot’s
” is here shorn of its attractions.
“hame coming
To George and Margaret Malcolm ten sons and
seven daughters were born. The young birds
were in fact kicking each other over the nest, and
an additional one was given by the old nurse,
beyond anything all the schools could hammer
into him, to wit, that his days of neiveing trouts
in the Esk were at an end, and he must now go
and do for himself. And she combed his hair to
SIR JOHN MALCOLM. 307
some purpose. It is out of such rough schooling
that many Scotch heroes in India have been
manufactured. Bear witness Baird, Monro,
and last but not least Colin Campbell of .
Clyde. Gash, douce, prudent woman, may your
race be long continued, for God pity the country,
when our Indian heroes are in the position of
“Story I have none to tell, sir.” Jock was the
worst boy in the school, and there never was a
row but the teacher observed “ Jock’s at the
bottom of it.” Malcolm remembered this, and
the story goes that when he published his history
of Persia he sent a copy to his old teacher writing
on the fly leaf, “Jock’s at the bottom of it !” A
portrait of Malcolm’s mother in the Royal
Academy a few years ago attracted much
attention, and according to the Times’ Art
Critic she looked in every way a mother of
heroes. *
THE SOLDIERS’ RETURN.
I have seen a story of the return of the two
brothers to Burnfoot after they had made a name
in the world. It was a fine summer afternoon,
and they were posting hard down the rough Lang-
holm road. Suddenly a glimpse reveals to them
their old home, with two aged relatives sitting at
308 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
the hall gate and knitting their stocking in the
drowsy sunshine. A river lay between them, and it
was a mile to the bridge. Heavily accoutred, as
they were, they dashed through the stream and
were soon hugging their Aunties.
“Oh gear will buy me rigs and land,
Oh gear will buy me sheep and kye,
But the tender heart o leesome love
The gowd and siller canna buy.”
Malcolm “ did not wear his heart upon his
sleeve for daws to peck at,” and did not tell this
story to every one, but he had another favourite
which will rejoice the heart of the Anglo-Indian
and is worthy of Dean Ramsay. A brother
officer came back to Edinburgh after twenty
years’ service in India. His arrival was unex-
pected, so mounting to the residence of his
Aunts, a flat, he introduced himself sans cere-
monie, and found the two at a game of draughts,
just as he had left them on his departure, to
whom his first greeting was—“What Have
you not finished that game yet f° He was thus
a man of infinite humour, and brimful of gaiety
and anecdote, his company greatly sought after,
and the life and Soul of every social gathering.
In early life he drank fairly well, but he is no
example in this to the present generation, as he
SIR, JOHN MALCOLM. 309
was of prodigious size, not corpulent, but capa-
ble of stowing away drinks of sorts with im-
punity. What his favourite drink was in early
manhood in Bombay I have no means of know-
ing. This I can aver, that Cape and Madeira
were extensively used, and whisky was unknown.
That he was merry, rollicking, even boisterous
we gather from Mackintosh, and a “ Malcolm
row ’’ was not uncommon. This was in Bombay,
but even in Paris he himself writes “I was
tipsy.” This we don’t believe, and are rather
inclined to think that it is conclusive evi-
dence against the assertion. It is no doubt
a, Ca,S62
“We are no fou, we are no fou,
But just a drappie in oor ee.”
He was “na fou, but just had plenty.” How-
ever, Malcolm was a man that did not need
drink to make him merry. In the tent and field,
when floored with fatigue or half-smothered with
the stowr and grime of battle, or amid burning
heat, cholera, and other depressing influences,
beleaguring Aseerghur, a quiet joke or vigorous
sally from him would raise the drooping spirits
of his companions in arms, and make them cheer-
ful for the day or night. With Malcolm ex-
istence in India was not only endurable but
310 ROOK OF BOMBAY.
delightful, and men soon began to find this out.
The Duke of Wellington averred that there was
not a good tempered man in India. It was
“ the cloimate,” no doubt of it, and we presume
he excepted himself. So it was thus that among
a lot of atrabilious men at Seringapatam he soon
discovered that Malcolm could put to flight the
demon of dulness. Humanly speaking it is the
one thing needful in India to soldier and civilian
alike. Even the medico and padre are not ex-
empt, for they are nothing unless they brighten
this world or the next. The jocular may co-exist
with the serious, and if Norman Macleod had
been a soldier he would have been a Mal-
colm. Here is an illustration. Henry Martyn,
the missionary, came to Bombay in 1811.
Though he was vulgarly called “the saint,”
he was not allowed to pass through the city
unnoticed to death and martyrdom. Instead of
being relegated to the backslums to munch
chowpatties in solitude, his conversations with
Mackintosh and Elphinstone, such of them as
have been preserved, furnish most pregnant
material for thought. Malcolm amid all his
work had time to write a letter of introduc-
tion to Sir Gore Ouseley, our ambassador at
the Court of Persia, for him. It says little,
SIR, JOHN MALCOLM. 311
but head and heart, Malcolm and Missionary,
are equally honoured thereby.”
IN PARIS.
Malcolm went to Paris in 1815 by invitation
of the Duke of Wellington. He knew him and
did not require the invitation : in fact, Malcolm
introduced his friends to the Duke. Emperors
were thick as blackberries, and Malcolm was in his
glory. He was then 44, so that it was not exactly
a case of “Youth in the prow and pleasure at the
helm.” He had two months of reviews (150,000
men), balls, operas, concerts. Rouge et Noire
mulcted him eight napoleons at one sitting. Next
night he lost nothing. We had thought that Bel-
videre and Non Parell had finished his card fancies.
But the old Bombay Adam breaks out in Paris.
The Duke. “Ah ! Malcolm, delighted to see
you,” voice and manner, everything the same.
He dimed about a dozen times with the Duke, and
sometimes sat next him talking of “battle,
murder, and sudden death.” “It was hard
pounding on both sides, and we pounded the
hardest,” said the Duke. He drove with the
* Letter dated February 1811:—I am satisfied that if you ever
see him you will be pleased with him. He will give you grace
before and after dinner, and admonish such of your party as
take the Lord’s name in vain, but his good Sense and great
learning will delight you, whilst his constant cheerfulness will
add to the hilarity of your party.”
312 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Duke in his gig. Like the Prince of Wales in
Bombay, the Duke was the fastest driver in
Paris. No necks were broken. A few Hindus-
tanee words would occasionally creep into the
conversation after dinner, and Malcolm would
jocularly ask the Duke if he was a Lootiewalla,
or comparing notes on Talleyrand find a re-
semblance to some old scoundrel or killedar in
Deccany fort which set them alaughing. “ Not
nearly so clever,” said the Duke. At first Mal-
colm found himself deficient in French, but by
the assistance of a master every morning he in
ten days, to use his own words, “ became quite
fluent in French after a bottle and a half of
champagne, and was able to recount as many
anecdotes as any of them.” This was among the
French and Continentals. How the Scotch
stories fared at his hands in the process of trans-
lation we have no means of knowing. We trust
that no dark grey man hailing from the north,
but hirsute and in Parisian garments, did not,
as in Chalmers’s case when he had just emerged a
full blown member of the Institute of France,
and was airing his eloquence fire across the table
d'hôte “I think, sir, if ye jist speik in braid
Scotch, we'll a understan ye a wee better.” But
joking apart, his powers of application were pro-
SIR JOHN MALCOLM. 313
digious. How it came to pass that a Scotch
farmer's son in the end of the eighteenth century,
who left school at the age of 11, with some
eighteen months of academy in London after-
wards, should be able to fit himself out in ten
days to hold philosophical conversations in French
with Humboldt, Volney, Denon, and Silvestre de
Sacy, is more than we can comprehend. The
secret, perhaps, lies in one sentence in his Life
of Olive, where he speaks of that self-education
which after all is of all educations the most im-
portant. Sir Walter Scott and Sir James Mack-
intosh were in Paris at this time : the latter
spoke French uncommonly well. We may add
that the high living in Paris had its usual
effect on Malcolm. He became plethoric and
required to be bled
A BIG DAY.
But leaving balls and pleasure houses, let us
contemplate Malcolm in a different aspect and
with different surroundings, and on a day as the
saying is “big with the fate of nations.” Malcolm
had many red letter days, but this was one that
brought out the supreme character of the man,
and roused into action its latent wisdom and
courage. He always set great store on this day,
and the memory of it was sweet to him in after
40
314 EOOFK OF BOMBAY.
years, for he was brought face to face with a
great difficulty with which he had to wrestle
without reference to his superiors. That day
was the 2nd June, 1818, a natal day for Western
India, and on which she may well set up the
white stone of ber liberties. He was then at a
village called Keyree, about thirty miles from
Asseergurh. Events had been hurrying on with
unexampled rapidity and the Mahratta Empire
was in the throes of dissolution. That Empire
had been founded by the indomitable pluck of
Seevajee, and its limits extended far and wide, so
that a successor made the boast that he had
watered the horses of the Deccan in the Hoogh-
ly. And it was no idle boast. But corruption
had long ago settled down upon it. And had
one-tenth of the energy of Seevajee been displayed
in defending them, the forts of the Deccan would
not have fallen before us like the walls of Jeri-
cho, and a new chapter* been added to the
History of India. Bajee Rao, the last of the
Peshwas, for twenty years had been wearying
out the lives of our great generals and statesmen.
by endless intrigue and duplicity. He had
wearied Wellington, and he had wearied Elphin-
* Thirty fortresses, each of which, with a Seevajee as a master,
would have defied the whole Indian Army, fell unresistingly lD 3,
few weeks,—Lake's Sieges of the Madras 477my, 1825. t
SIR JOHN MALCOLM. 315
stone and Malcolm. He was to weary us no more.
A mandate issued from the camp of Malcolm, that
he was to resign for himself and his successors for
ever all right and title to the government of Poona,
in one day leave for “ Hindustan,” and that if in
twenty-four hours he did not present himself in
the camp of Malcolm, he and his followers in
arms would be put to the edge of the sword.
He came and we all know the rest. It would
be no compliment to the understanding of our
readers if we set down and leisurely detailed
what Bajee Rao's Government was in 1818 and
what the state of the country now is in 1881.
He who runs may read, and he who sits still may
read also, if he is of a doubting mind, in the
Rutnageeree section of Mr. Campbell’s Bombay
Gazetteer, a chapter illustrating the infamies of
Bajee Rao's rural administration. Suffice it to
Say that as soon as he left for Benares, Deccan
and Konkan breathed freely almost for the first
time in their history, and the country set out
like a giant in a new race of existence. The
land rested from the torments of tyranny and
oppression. Life and property became clothed
with the habiliments of respect—we mean the
respect that a man hath for himself, and that
which he oweth to his neighbour, instead of
316 BOOK OF BOMBATſ.
making him a mark for robbery or murder.
Henceforward the pathway of Western India was
to be no longer through the jungle, on the track
of wild beasts and wilder men, but on the broad
highway which leads to security and civilisation.
DINNER TO THE ETTRICK SEIEPHERD.
In 1832 a dinner was given in Free Masons
Hall, and 200 persons were present. Again
Malcolm is on the crest of the wave and takes
the chair. It was a great night for Scotland.
The sons of Burns were there, Lockhart son-in-
law of Sir Walter Scott, Galt the novelist, Basil
Hall, Lord Mahon, Vice-Chancellor Sir John
Stewart, and, a greater than he, Brougham Lord
Chancellor of England. Everything passed
off magnificently without a hitch. The Shep-
herd was seen late in the evening in his element
ladling out whisky toddy to all and sundry
from Burn’s Punch Bowl lent for the occasion
by Mr. Hastie, member for Paisley.
GOVERNOR OF BOMBAY.
In 1828 Sir John Malcolm became Governor of
Bombay, and the question arises, why did he accept
the office P He was worthy of it, and Bombay
was proud to have him. He it was that thought
that the Bay of Naples in natural beauty was not
SIR JOHN MALCOLM. 317
t
so striking as the harbour of Bombay, and that
it vied with Corfu and the Albanian hills. But
it must be remembered that Malcolm was now
59 years of age. Men have no doubt done won-
derful things after 59, witness Napier at Meanee,
and Colin Campbell leading the final assault on
Lucknow. These sons of Mars were in their
element, and Malcolm in Bombay in 1828 we
have come to think was a little out of it. “I
was a fool for coming to India, and this I have
showed every day since I landed.” So he did,
and we cannot disguise from ourselves that
Malcolm had now become a prey to the last in-
firmity of noble minds, and it is with a feeling
of disappointment that we read in his memoirs
that he accepted the Bombay post as a stepping
stone to the Viceroyalty of India. That event,
as we all know, never came. Laudable ambition,
praiseworthy endeavour, say some. Perhaps.
There is a tradition that on one of the out-
lying boulders which jut into Loch Lomond, a
Highland Laird, with rod, line, and clip, managed
to land in one morning ninety-nine salmon, and
that though he fished all day and far into the
evening he could not make up the even number.
It is the evening of a long day, and Malcolm
still threshes the water after having filled the
318 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
creel of a giant. So he comes to Bombay—not
the old Bombay of Wellington and Mackintosh
I weem, but a Bombay full of Judges, writs of
Habeas Corpus, and worries of all sorts, tear and
wear of body and brain, for though both were
framed on a gigantic model, the drafts made on
them were unusual and incessant, and not to be
recouped by any amount of pig-sticking or
riding cross country in Kutch and Katty war.
There was no longer the sound of revelry at
Parell, but an endlesss decoction of tea and
coffee administered six days in the week to a
discerning public. For one thing, he had to do
with a most disagreeable subject, the reduction
of salaries. A man that takes retrenchment
in hand has not his sorrows to seek. }
writes he. Melancholy
“I drink no wine,”
admission, the days of high jinks are gone, wit
banished and mirth nowhere ; mothing but an
endless caterwauling which followed him to
Pamwell, up the Ghauts, past Poona, cross the
Wye, till the methermost summit of Mahablesh-
wur was reached, where a statue of retrenchment
in the shape of some attenuated official ogled
him at the door of his bungalow. How could he
drink wine under such circumstances 2 The
wonder is that he survived the ordeal, and we
SIR JOHN MALCOLM. 319
are certainly not surprised to find one fine morn-
ing ere his tenure of office is half expired that
he chucks up the whole affair. Better for himself
that he had never had anything to do with it.
There is an illustration ready at our hand as to
how this Bombay Governorship was dealt with
by Mountstuart Elphinstone, the immediate pre-
decessor of Malcolm. He at all events did not make
this island a stepping stone to Viceregal power. -
He was not inferior to Malcolm in intellect,
not second to him in administrative ability, and
yet he refused twice the Viceroyalty of India.
Did he suffer by the refusal On the contrary, the
story adds fresh lustre to his fame and grows
brighter by repetition. No feverish ambition or
restless anxiety darkened the brow of Elphinstone.
“Silent he moves, majestically slow,
Like ebbing Nile or Ganges in his flow.”
Greater in this than Malcolm, greatest if you
will of all the Bombay Governors, but measured
even by a wider scale Elphinstone stands single
and alone among the most illustrious Indian
statesmen as the one man whom Viceroyalty,
the Peerage, and Parliamentary honours solicited
in vain. His resolute modesty mocks the
courage of wordly ambition, and the feeble:
health which is said to have dictated it, enabled
320 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
him by care, contentment, and patience to live
to a patriarchal age, for he came to his grave
like a shock of corn fully ripe, ere a single
ear had been withered by the touch of time or
the blighting curse of envy.
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM.
This was the era of economy and retrench-
ment in Bombay, and to everybody connected
with Government it must have been a dreadful
time, for there was no discharge in that warfare.
The measures were necessary, and doubtless
Malcolm had his instructions, but I have never
heard that he was a man of figures, or had
any special aptitude that way. Clearly Mal-
colm’s vocation was to deal with men of increasing
not decreasing incomes. It turns his fine spirits
into gall. In the clipping process his shears
were co-extensive with the Presidency, and he
took a hard grip of every man in it, so much so
that he actually left Bombay under the idea that
he had saved it forty lakhs during his three
years' tenure of office. From the resumption of
salaries that took place after his departure, we
do not doubt that he was merely pumping water
out of one part of the ship and that it was coming
or would come back somewhere else. There
SIR JOHN MALCOLM. 32I
seems to have been too much of the square and
rule about this business, as is generally the case
of statistical surveys of what the lives and
bodies of men can be furnished at the least possi-
ble cost. In this roughshod way you can get
over a good deal of ground, but the question
arises, does it pay in the long run ? Had he
confined himself to reduction of forces in the field
so lately, or in rectifying glaring abuses, the
howl of indignation would not have been so
marked. But when European officers were asked
to give up half their tent allowance, estimate
Rs. 70,000, and the three members of the
Medical Board each Rs. 9,570, Medical Store-
keeper Rs. 6,000, it became beyond a joke. He
was a great advocate apparently of the Scot’s
proverb that “every little maks a mickle,” for
he actually embodies in the list of items which
swell up the amount of forty lakhs, and which was
transmitted to the Governor-General, a reduc-
tion in the gram rations of the mules in Kutch
from 7% lbs.-their daily allowance—to 5 lbs.,
Rs. 10,000 saved out of dooly-bearers and camel-
drivers, and two peons at Sion causeway, whose
united earnings now eliminated effect an incre-
ment of Rs. 140 per annum ! Some of his
reductions were no doubt perfectly proper, i.e.,
41
322 Book OF BOMBAY.
that of Inspector of Deccany Forts, though we
can testify that the office is a most laborious
one ; sending the elephants back to Bengal
where they came from ; 10 copies subscription,
substituted for 20 of the Bombay Sammachar.
The Town Hall at this time being nearly
finished was a perfect God-send to him. Lath
and plaster soon dry in this country, and great
was the evacuation of Government servants from
their bungalows into those new quarters. All
no doubt most wise and proper, but when we
read that Grafton and Jervis’ survey of the
Deccan and the Southern Konkan was discon-
tinued, that the Lunatic Asylum figures for
Rs. 600, that by giving up sword exercise and
blank cartridge at annual reviews (this statement
is supported by the Commander-in-Chief) a
saving is effected of Rs. 35,000, and finally that
the Government allowance for turf plates to
be run by country horses in Guzerat and the
Deccan is abolished, “our motions of vice and
virtue are shaken to their foundations, and our
reliance upon truth and duty at an end for
ever.” No wonder there was a dinner once a
month only at Parell during these very cold
seasons, of which could not be said
'Twas merry in the hall
And the beards Wag’d all,
SIR JOHN MALCOLM. 323
for the baked meats not seldom furnished the
funeral rites of some unfortunate, and the guests
over whose heads the wand of retrenchment had
passed no longer saw in the Knight of Burnfoot
the joyous reveller of 1804-11, but a gryphon,
stern and inexorable, standing with a roll of the
names of those whose blood had been shed be-
tween his teeth. It would have been well for
Malcolm and well for posterity if he had initiated
his economical notions somewhat earlier in the
day, say at Keyree, when he committed the Gov-
ernment to make Bajee Rao an annual payment
of 800,000 Sicca Rupees, which at the then ex-
change of 2s. 6d. amounted to £100,000 sterling.
VI ET ARMIS.
In addition to these measures which affected
so injuriously the condition of man and beast,
a strange epidemic seized the Governor and
Judges of the Island; whether it was imported
from Scotland or indigenous is unknown. It was
only skin-deep and cutaneous at first, but broke
out into such an astonishing degree of inflamma-
tion as to defy the wisest doctors of the State.
It killed two Judges in two months—Sir Edward
West and Sir Charles Chambers. It closed the
doors of the High Court of Bombay for two
324 BOOK OF BOM BAY.
months. Justice is blind ; she then became deaf
and dumb, though there never was so much to
hear or talk about in Bombay, and it was then the
naughty girl threw away her scales. It was all
about a little boy at Poona—Moro Ruganath.
The Judges wanted him in Bombay to try Sir
John Malcolm’s new road down the Ghauts. The
Governor would not have this, and the more the
Judges said yes he said no. Let him alone. He
was good for Fancy Balls, and that sort of thing.
So they set at it hammer and tongs. At first the
tourney between the two Scotch Knights—Sir
John Malcolm and Sir John Peter Grant—was
amusing, but after the words “within these
walls we owe no equal and no superior but God
and the King” were uttered, the ladiesin opposite
phalanxes ceased to bow to each other. After
this the deluge. It was in vain that Malcolm
wandered among the ruins of Bejapore, or fled
to Mahableshwur to write letters to Sir Walter
Scott. No amount of legendary lore would do
away with it. In vain Lord Ellenborough
wrote:—“ I am sending you a new bishop.” A
new bishop 2 The Pope of Rome could not settle
it. They only cure was to scatter the byke.
So a few months afterwards we find Sir John
Malcolm ploughing-his way up the Red Sea, in
SIR JOHN MALCOLM. 325
the Hugh Lindsay, that pioneer of steam navi-
gation in these waters, writing enormous de-
spatches to prove that he was right and every-
body was wrong. And Sir John Peter Grant,
we forget where he went to. It was either
Calcutta or Rothiemurchus. -
So ends the story of
“ The Barrin of oor door, weel !”
PERSON.
Sir John Malcolm when in his prime was the
finest looking man in Bombay. He was nearly
six feet and a half in height, proportionate and
well built, and so muscular as to astonish some of
the most powerful carrying natives of Bushire
when he took a pipe of wine on his back up the
stairs of the Residency. At 60 he was good at the
spear, and I observe 32 hogs fell to his party in
two days in Guzerat. He had a fine frank open
countenance and Shakesperean forehead, and his
manner in youth and early manhood was exceed-
ingly genial. His wife also was fine looking.
They were indeed a splendid couple. When he
took Lady Malcolm to the Langholm district—
happening to be in an hostelrie, the landlady,
some old acquaintance of the Burnfoot family,–
whispered quietly into his ear, “Weel, Sir John,
ye’ve got a top hizzie.” But rus aut urbs it
326 Book OF BOMBAY.
was all the same. William Jerdan tells us
the beauty of Lady Malcolm struck the eye of the
beholder in Hyde Park, and inspired some of the
sparkling verses of Praed.
CONCLUSION.
Malcolm is now near the end of his journey.
He goes home in 1830, writes books, and the
Duke tells him that though he were an angel
from heaven, nobody will listen to him. And
yet another ambition. I will arise and go to my
native boroughs, solicit their suffrages and re-
present them in Parliament. The native boroughs,
Dumfries, Annan, and the like, would have none
of him, no Conservative, no friend of the Duke
of Wellington.
The same event happens every day, the same
experience followed by the same result, lessons
on the vanity of human wishes written on the
sands of time, and of which the lives of great
men all remind us.
It is the pace that kills, and it is thus that we
see during the last six years of his life, Malcolm
rushing to his doom, the unconscious instrument
of his own destruction.
He died on the 30th May, 1833, at the age of
64, and on the same day his house of Warfield
was completed and ready for occupation.
SIR JAMES MAC KINTOSH
OR BOMBAY 1804 TO 1812.
329
CHAPTER XIV.
SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH
OR BOMBAY 1804 TO 1812.
BETwº EN 1804 and 1812 four men appeared in
Bombay who ultimately attained the highest
object of human ambition in war, in politics, and
in literature. There were giants in those days,
and we have seen what of Bombay interest
centres in one of them, the greatest of them all.
Mountstuart Elphinstone was the second. He
was twice offered by different administrations the
Governor-Generalship of India. John Malcolm,
the third, fought his way from the cot of Burn-
foot, in Eskdale, to the portals of Parell, and
became the life-long friend, the bosom friend of
the Duke of Wellington. These were the three
mighty men who, by the sword and diplomacy,
extended and preserved the boundaries of
British dominion ; but it was reserved for a
fourth to keep alive the flame of liberty within
them, and illustrate by his genius the realms
42
330 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
which they had either subdued or defended.
That man was Sir James Mackintosh. He still
appears the most splendid character in the whole
range of Bombay history—made to love and to
be beloved, with a transparent intellect that shed
an electric light on everything it touched, and
an imagination that soared far above the com-
mon level of mortals. He stands on a pedestal
peculiarly his own, and he is more identified with
Bombay by a long residence in it. Indeed, so
important does this appear to his biographer that
he devotes five hundred out of the thousand
pages of his life to the Bombay portion of it.
He arrived in Bombay in May, 1804, and left it
in November, 1812. “ The cares and duties of
a family oblige me to provide for them in other
climates.” His mother died in 1779, when he
was fourteen years of age. In more senses than
one he was a Scottish orphan. When he was
Recorder of Bombay he wrote—“In her last
letter my mother sent me two Scotch bank-notes,
of one pound each, which seemed at that time an
inexhaustible fortune.”
BOMBAY A DULL PLACE.
“The neighbourhood is beautiful; but what
avails all this in a cursed country where you
SIR. JAMES MACKINTOSH. 331
cannot ramble amid these scenes? As for society
the back-room of a London book-seller’s shop
is better. There is a langour and a lethargy
in the society here to which I never elsewhere
saw any approach. It is all a cheat,” he ex-
claims. “If ever I rise from the dead (he means,
no doubt, getting out of the Bombay grave-
clothes) I shall be very glad to travel for the
sake of seeing clever men and beautiful countries.”
And again, “Our climate may be endured, but
I feel, by its constant and silent operation, ex-
istence is rendered less joyous, and even less
comfortable. I see around me no extraordinary
prevalence of disease, but I see no vigorous,
cheerful health.” All quite true from his own
standpoint, and equally untrue from the stand-
point of others, for the Bombay of the period
under review, to an ordinary mortal, could not
have been a very dull place. There were, no
doubt, at that time dull and heavy men in
Bombay. We have more than a suspicion that
Jonathan Duncan was a dull man. He was the
natural leader of society, and his influence must
have made itself everywhere apparent. A man
cannot live thirty-nine years in India without
being somewhat flabby, leaden, or lethargic—
ârahmanised, that is Mackintosh’s word in de-
332 JBOOK OF BOMBATV.
scribing Duncan. Hence we fancy that J. D.
was as dead as a door nail to the brilliancy Of
wit or the pathos of sentiment. He was too far
gone even for the surgical operation proverbial
for Scotsmen, and would sit perfectly helpless
amid the subtle flashes of wit that fell flat and
pointless on his Forfarshire understanding,
Mackintosh may have resented this, found the
verandahs of the old Government House in Apollo
Street much too marrow for him, took french-
leave and sauntered into the Bombay Green to
seek for the Southern Cross or soar in regions
of transcendental philosophy. And the most
likely of all times would be that in which Arthur
Wellesley said that Jonathan Duncan had lost
his head.
But there was another, and a much more
cogent reason, why Mackintosh found Bombay
a dull place, and one special to himself and
apart altogether from individuals, and having
nothing to do with the gloom which we have
seen overspread Bombay in 1804. It was two
years before Mackintosh cleared his expenses
and established himself in Bombay. He was
thirty-eight years of age when he arrived, and
had already lived one life in London. Not
a life in a garret, for though he had made a fruit-
SIR. JAMES MACKIN TOSH. 333
less start with his Edinr. M. D. at Weymouth to
practise as a physician, he soon found his way to
London, and made the acquaintance and friend-
ship of some most eminent and gifted men. He
had attended the trial of Warren Hastings, had
obtained great distinction by the publication of
Vindiciae Gallicae, had been the guest of Burke
the aged at Beaconsfield, and the friend of
Charles James Fox, of whom Burke said that he
was the most accomplished and brilliant debater
that the world ever saw. He had founded in his
own house the “ King of Clubs,” consisting of
twenty-five celebrated men. So that coming to
Bombay was really like coming to a city of the
dead, a copy of the greatest change, as sayeth
the preacher, from ceiled roofs to thatched bun-
galows, from living like gods to dying like men.
He found Jonathan Duncan in place of Henry
Brougham, Charles Forbes for Mr. Ricardo, and
Dr. Keir, Civil Surgeon, for Hallam the his-
torian. His spirit sank within him, and he
uttered those words of despair. In those days
steamers were unknown, and it was a very long
cry to Loch Awe.” But it is not given to every
man to be a Ricardo, and it may have been well
* The English news was often eight months in finding its way
to Bombay. -
334 BOOK OF SOMBAY,
for Mackintosh and well for posterity that eight
years of affluent ease and leisure were afforded
him to gather up his intellectual wares in the
city of Bombay. Besides, dulness is a compara-
tive term, and happiness a measure of the capa-
city of the individual for enjoying it. “ Peebles
for pleasure,” said an honest Scotsman on his
return from that London after which Sir James
Mackintosh sighed in the bitterness of his heart;
and we daresay that Mr. Henshaw, the voluble
mouth-piece of the Wellington entertainments,
and of whom history records the voa et pretered,
nihil, was in the seventh heaven of delight, while
our modern Prometheus lay chained to the rock
of Mazagon, plus mosquitoes and prickly-heat.
We cannot, therefore, agree that Bombay was a
bad place for Mackintosh. William Erskine
came out with him and became his son-in-law,
and, if we mistake not, has given to Bombay two.
generations of Civil Servants. One morning a
young man called upon him with a letter of in-
troduction from Robert Hall. He also became
his son-in-law, Babylonian Rich, the afterwards
Resident at Bagdad.
THE DIARY AND LETTERS OF MACKINTOSH
Let in much light on the Bombay society,
1804 to 1812, and unconsciously on himself. At
SIR. JAMES MACRINTOSHI. 335
first we seem to look backwards across the haze
of seventy years, and see looming in the distance,
at the end of a long avenue, the shadow of a great
man under the portals of Parell. But gradually
the intervening cross lights disappear, and by the
aid of what he has left us he comes forth from
the region of shadow and dubiety, and walks the
earth again with a character not dim or tarnished
by time, and with an intellect as lofty as ever
animated the sons of men.
The feeblest effort of imagination can thus
picture Mackintosh as he once lived among us—
on the judgment-seat—moving amid his fellow
citizens, or in the bosom of his family. His face
and form, his daily amusements and avocations
are familiar to us. Parell has been given to him
as his residence by Jonathan Duncan, who is a
bachelor and does not need it. His wife is the
first lady in the island, and with five daughters
constitutes the household. The dining and bil-
diard-rooms are almost the same now as they
were then. The rooms are spacious, and the
werandahs long and wide.
HE DID GOOD WORK IN BOMBAY.
His accomplishments were versatile. He wrote
observations on the Finances of Salsette for the
336 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Governor, which were gladly availed of by him.
At Duncan’s request he wrote the funeral sermon
on the Viceroy, the Marquis Cornwallis He
wrote to the newspapers. The man who in after
years was asked by the noblemen and gentlemen
who were then the leaders of the Whig party to
write an epitaph for Fox’s tomb in Westminster
Abbey on hearing of his death did not disdain to
send his panegyric to the Bombay Courier. He
founded, ere he had been many months here, the
Bombay Literary Society, which has grown into
the Bombay Royal Asiatic Society, and sent out
the books which constitute the foundation of the
noble library which adorns it. Of that Society
he was the first President, Charles Forbes,
Treasurer, and William Erskine, Secretary. But
above all, and what was not known until after
his death, and the value of which increases with
the lapse of years, he brought his comprehensive
intellect to bear upon those social questions
which underlie all Government, and in his deli-
neation of the Deccan in 1805 answers for us,
and those who come after us, the question
whether our being here in 1881 is a good to the
matives of India.
He had the wisdom of the seer and wrote for
posterity ;-where there is no vision the people
SIR, JAMES MACKINTOSH. 337
perish. As long, therefore, as the written letter
remains, so long will Mackintosh continue to be
a most powerful ally of the British Govern-
ment.*
This will do for
A QUIET DAY AT PARELL.
Our host sends a man to rouse us before day-
light. Sahib, sahib / Those dreadful words still
linger in our ears, uttered by the hamal to the
sleeping Christian. O thou merciless heathen I
But there is no rest to the wicked. So, quick as
thought, we hurry into our clothes, with not a
glance to spare for the silhouette of Charles James
Fox in our dressing-room, rush along the corri-
dors, stumbling over the domestics, who litter
the place like the sheeted dead, descend the noble
flight of stairs, greet our friend and master in
his leather breeches and top-boots, his Scotch
terrier Tartar meanwhile giving tongue, mount
our Arabs—he on Sir Charles Grey, I on Bob-
berywallah—and with one long canter are in
Mahim woods. The false dawn is past, and al-
ready the sun’s first rays dart through the trees
their silvery sheen.
Here we draw breath. We are told that this
* We have made large drafts on this subject from his writ-
ings in previous articles.
43
338 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
noble forest is noted in our oldest maps, and certes
it is a goodly sight. Such palms | date, doum,
fan, cocoa, betel, and acacia,
“Bending
To earth their leaf-crown'd heads,
Like youthful maids when sleep descending
Warns them to their downy beds.”
Our talk is miscellaneous–Aldourie, Kellachie,
and spearing salmon on the Don, with a sprink-
ling of European politics and Bombay police bills.
On and on, until in Salsette a new glory bursts
upon us in the pallas tree, called the flame of the
woods, setting, as it were, with its scarlet flowers,
the very forest on fire ; and we are told that it
gives its name to the battle-field of Plassey. And
yet another wonder, the silk-cotton tree, a marvel
of floral magnificence, decked in wool and scarlet,
like the bride of King Solomon. Neither gool-
mohr nor bougainvillae adorn the scene.* We
return. After a bath we are more buoyant
than if we had emerged from a hummam in Cairo
or Damascus; pass into the verandah, and ex-
change greetings with a number of young faces,
their hair waving in the morning breeze, and
* Pomciana Regia, a native of Madagascar, introduced into
India within the last sixty years.-Brand's Flora of India, 1874.
Bougainvillae, so called after a French botanist, and also a Com-
paratively late introduction.
SIR. JAMES MACKINTOSH. 339
Some of whom have never yet set eye on poker
and tongs. *
The library table groans with new books, a
most refreshing sight to a new comer. Edin-
burgh Review in blue-and-yellow livery, Scott's
novels and lays, Burns (the Kilmarnock edition),
and a curiosity which Elphinstone found at
Peshawar, a book printed by Gassendi in Paris,
1646, and presented by him to his pupil Bernier,
the great Indian traveller, with Bernier's name
written by himself on it.
But hush Mackintosh reads prayers ; he did
so on board all the way out, and a fell” reader
he is. Breakfast comes on the scene, which we
proceed to demolish. Sir James busy at his
kedgeree, two boiled eggs, three cups of tea, and
two of coffee. Padre Martyn from Calcutta,
vulgarly called “ the Saint,” has come in, who
afterwards died in Tokah, and whose praise is
now in all the churches ; so we had the novelty
of grace before and after meat, all standing.
Much discussion on grammar and metaphysics ;
we read, lounge, write, and loiter away in the
beautiful apartments that contain the library.
Dine at four. From half-past five to seven walk
* Fell, acute, hot-biting.—Jamieson. His voice was nasal,—
Sydney Smith.
340 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
on the terrace and walks of this noble house and
garden ; drink tea at seven ; and from half-past
seven to ten, bed-time, our host reads to his wife
and children aloud in his light vest and white
jacket. Addison and Milton are his favourites.
But Tasso also and novels, for Scott has just
burst upon the scene, and Madame de Stáel
comes in by turns. The German governess is
gone—married, we suppose—but the girls are
not without education, and their father helps
them in their study of German, Italian, and
French, of the last being such a master that he
could correspond with a French statesman, or
debate in French in a court of law.
A NOISY DAY AT TARAL.A.
I happened to be in Bombay in January, 1811.
Sir James was then living at Tarala, Mazagon.
It was not so ornate a house as Parell, but it was
roomy and had a fine view : Parell had none.
Lady Mackintosh had gone home. It was the
time of the races, and a good deal of fun was
going on. The races were then in the morning.
We drove to the Grand Stand, Byculla, and
there met Lady Ouseley. I remember that Sir
James was clothed in white vest, breeches, and a
frock-coat of green silk, and Lady Ouseley re-
SIR. JAMES MACKINTOSH. 341
splendent in Genoa velvet, with three ostrich-
plumes towering overhead and nodding in the
breeze. I never saw such roads—they were as
finely macadamised as those now in England,
and long before the name of that celebrated
highwayman was ever heard of.” The Flats
were a caution. Rickard’s horse won, and he
was in ecstacies. Tyler of the Indian Navy
pointed out the horses, and knew all about them.
The Arab horses, of course, did not run so quick
as the English horses at New Market. That
evening forty sat down to dinner in the strictest
etiquette. Being left out in the cold, I had no
lady to take in. I was amused afterwards by a
married lady asking me if I had been “ship-
wrecked.” I had never heard the word before in
this sense, and imagined it referred to the voyage
Out.
I never saw men eat so little. Coming from
the land where Lord Braxfield had said that a
turkey was an awkward beast to eat—too much
for one, and two little for two—I know that my
father’s retainers near Golspie would have been
thankful for, and made short work of, the ghost
of the feast, which must have been quite as bulky
as when we sat down. Every dish was put on
* Captain Basil Hall,
342 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
the table, and the air was heavy and overpower-
ing. I remember that the party was stiff until the
champagne passed round. The men drank fairly
well: Sir James only cold water. We had been
drinking Shiraz, the finest wine of Persia, and
Constantia, the finest wine of Africa ; but no
sooner was it discussed than Malcolm set the
table in a roar by his adventures at the Court of
Scindia. It was the story which he had told
Wellington, and which Wellington sent on to
his brother the Viceroy, the Earl of Mornington.
During a durbar in the tent of Scindia the rain
came down, filling a corner of the flap with half-
a-ton of water, and the solemnity of the durbar
was suddenly arrested by the falling cataract,
“Oh, Jasus !” and a hideous yell from an Irish
officer named Pepper, who had been suddenly sub-
merged, at which the grim countenance even of
Scindia relaxed. Malcolm was a perfect Jupiter
Tonans, six feet and a-half high, and as strong
as an ox. Had he not carried for a few feet
grain in sacks on his back to the weight of
830 lbs., and a pipe of wine up the stairs of the
|Besidency at Bushire 2. It was long before the
toast of the “ outward bound” was given, for the
ladies were made much of, and song and senti-
ment followed each other in quick succession.
SIR, JAMES MACKINTOSH, 343
“Drink to me only with thine eyes,” and a Scots-
man out of compliment to the host gave “The
Lass of Inverness.” We lingered long over the
Madeira. Lady Ouseley played beautifully on
the piano. A lot went in for billiards. Malcolm,
who was an adept at cards, made up several
parties.* I happened to join Elphinstone with
two lady partners at whist—it was long whist,
and a capital game we had. My partner gave me
a pinch of snuff from her box: we were still
in the age of “ snuffy Charlotte.” I never saw
a man play a better game than Elphinstone,
and so cool, for he was well tried. We had not
been long seated before his eye caught the sight
of his Secretary, standing like an apparition
between the pillars of the verandah. He had
just arrived from Poona with bad news, and we
knew it, for he had a tell-tale face, and you
might have led him with a straw. But Elphin-
stone never flinched, changed countenance, re-
voked, nor played a wrong card ; and as he ,
claimed the victory—eight, nine, ten, he quietly
rose, after giving the Secretary a terrible
* Malcolm in his, youth was very fond of cards. “I havo
been in my very early years the victim of such habits, and was
only Saved by the combined workings of distress from debt,
and a strong call from men of whose regard I was proud, and
Who added to the respect I owed them as superiors all the claims
of friendship.”—Kaye's Life of Malcolm.
344 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
quart d'heure. He then saw the ladies into their
palanquins, wished them good night, and turning
round to the Secretary with a “good evening,”
heard all he had got to say.” Everybody
was in great glee. Mr. , glorious, chasing
Mrs. round the library to obtain a kiss. I
looked into the smoking-room, a portion of the
dining-room extemporised for this purpose : ten
Englishmen squatted on their Persian rugs
à l’Arabe, and as many hookahs going, with so
much gurgle-gurgle and hubble-bubble, as if
there had been so many stones in their throats.
You could not hear the sound of your own voice,
or distinguish one face from another, as the
smoke through ten pair of nostrils filled the room
to suffocation. The floor was covered with cross-
legged men and marghilehs, the twisted coils of
which appeared like snakes in many a fold. It
was a mercy there were no curtains. I re-
member nothing afterwards. I had often heard
of “a Malcolm row,” and a “ Bobbery dinner,”
but I did not see one the whole time I was in
Bombay.
CALLS.
I made a number of calls one afternoon with
Mackintosh. Nobody then ever dreamed of fore-
* We think the locale of this incident was Poona ; but it does
r)0t, matter much.
sIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. 345
rooom calls. Some of the bungalows were near
Belvedere and Belmont, for example.* The
Rickardses were in Belvedere, as the Drapers
had been forty years before them, and I heard
much of Eliza,t and how she had turned the
heads of everybody except James Forbes, who
merely viewed the creation of so much beauty
and accomplishments as a philosophical study.
At Love Grove we met Maria Graham, the
author of the charming letters, and she told us
the sad story of its name : of the young lover
who, in endeavouring to save his sweetheart,
shared her grave ; both were drowned, and their
bodies washed ashore, one at each of the pro-
montories which abut from the Vellard'; and
how a temple was reared on each for the offer-
ings of the love-sick and the delectation of the
fakirs. At Breach Candy Mackintosh pointed
out to me the whereabouts of the only battle
ever fought by the French and English on the
western seas of India,i and in which, if I
understand the matter rightly, we were “ con-
foundedly licked,” said the author of Vindiciae
* Belvedere stood on Mazagon until a few months ago.—
Dr. A. Leith’s Sanitary Report, 1864.
f For further information on Eliza, see Sterne's Life, Thac-
keray's Humourists, and Abbe Raynal. She died at Bristol at the
age of 33, and is buried in the Cathedral. --
f The “Apollo” and “Anson " engagement, 1747.
44
346 Book OF BOMBAY.
Gallicae, by that gallant nation, though our men
fought bravely enough. In this way we pay
pleasant visits at the Mount, Randall Lodge,
Non Parell (Malcolm’s), and Surrey Cottage.
The people were so many that I have but a con-
fused recollection of their names: Lushington,
Money, Forbes, Abercrombie, Erskine, Warden,
and Salt. Old Duncan was so ill that we could
not see him ; indeed, a few days afterwards Dr.
Keir sent us a motice of his death. And short as
the distance was between his house and the
Cathedral, we all got dreadful headaches at the
funeral, by walking in the sun without our hats
at four in the afternoon. When I was in Bom-
bay the story of steam navigation in America
reached us, and how a passage had been made of
one hundred and sixty miles in thirty-two hours
from New York to Albany. Mackintosh was in
ecstasies. “This,” he said, “ would ensure a
passage from Portsmouth to Bombay in about a
hundred days.” He exclaimed, “Why were we
not born a century later l’” Sir James was born
in 1765. In 1865 the passage was made in
twenty-one days. &
On the occasion of the death of Lord Corn-
wallis Sir James preached by proxy in Bombay
Cathedral. He had been asked by the Governor
$1R JAMES MACKIN'íos H. 347
to write the funeral sermon, and he did so, and
it was preached by the senior chaplain.” We
all went, of course Mackintosh included, and
it was most amusing, if such a word can be used
in connection with a funeral sermon. The preach-
er stuttered over some of the finest passages
and read others perfunctorily, and with un-
concern ; took a pinch of snuff, and sneezed in the
middle of the peroration so loud as to shake some
monumental medallions on the walls. There was
little of death, I assure you, in our heads when
we came out, and the laughing was continued at
intervals during the following day; at all events,
I can vouch for myself.
ON THE JUDGMENT-SEAT,
Before he delivers his address to the Grand
Jury, of which W. T. Money was the foreman,
and to give a composed dignity to it, he reads
the 1st vol. of Robertson’s History of Scotland.
The statement seems theatrical, but it is perfectly
sincere. At half-past five, it being almost then
dark, and within the old Court House, on the
afternoon of Monday the 16th of July, 1811, Sir
James Mackintosh rises from the judgment-seat.
: Printed and published with the Senior Chaplain's name.—
Mackintosh's Life. -
348 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
He assumes the black-cap and pronounces
sentence of death on James Estelow, an English
soldier, for the murder of a mean Hindoo at
Goa. From his diary we learn that he never
signed a paper with more tranquillity than he
did the death-warrant. But he is now pale and
emaciated, and his voice falters as he pronounces. . .
the words of doom. The circumstances were
peculiar. Mackintosh had never done the same
before, and will never do it again. In a judicial
administration extending over seven years, a
population of 200,000 had been governed without
a capital punishment, and without increase of
crimes. On Saturday morning at five minutes
past nine the procession from the gaol to the
Esplanade passes his own residence at Tarala,
Mazagon. He sees it. Patten, the gaoler, in
front in a small carriage. James Estelow follows,
dressed in black, handcuffed, and with a rope
round his neck, with the hangman in a large car, -
surrounded by a guard of the sheriff's peons.
See in this, O ! my Aryan brother, the even-
handed justice of the Sirkar ; for what does his
white face avail him now * The scene closes
amid great excitement. Nothing like it since
the Malays who murdered Lord Nelson’s brother
were hanged on Gibbet Island. Fifty thousand
SIR. JAMES MACKIN TOS H. 349
natives were on the Esplanade, and most of the
JEuropean inhabitants were present.
AN UNSPOKEN BOMBAY SERMON.
“I have just glanced over Jeremy Taylor on
the beatitudes. The selection is made in the
most sublime spirit of virtue. For their trans-
cendent excellence I can find no words to express
my admiration and reverence. ‘Blessed are the
merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” “Put on
as the elect of God bowels of mercy.” At last
the divine speaker rises to the summit of moral
sublimity: ‘Blessed are they who are persecuted
for righteousness’ sake.” For a moment, “O !
Teacher Blessed,” I taste the unspeakable
delight of feeling myself to be better.” This
is akin to a meditation of Dr. Chalmers.”
MACEQINTOSH AND WILSON.
As we draw this paper to a close we feel the
touch of a vanished hand. A name rises that
must be still fresh and green in the memory of
our readers, the Missionary, Philanthropist, and
late Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bom-
bay. Though “their graves are severed far and
wide by mountain, stream, and sea,” by force of
* Chalmers was the personal friend of both Mackintosh and
Wilson,
350 BOOR OF BOMBAY,
contrast, by force of comparison, by the like and
the unlike, these are Bombay brothers that can-
not be divided. Though living at different
periods, Mackintosh and Wilson are knit together
by a two-fold bond, an intense love of literature
and a deep and abiding devotion in the service of
the Almighty, not Abdallah the slave of God,
but the willing and intelligent instruments of his
high behests. Caledonia, stern and wild, was
the nurse of these gentle and loving natures.
No two men in Bombay ever had such troops of
friends, the one in his Spartan simplicity on the
Cliff, the other at Parell. They had great gifts,
but great as they were, greater than the gold
and frankincense of India, true wise men of the
East, they laid them at the feet of their Master.
Memory in the One,” imagination and me-
mory in the other—towers of strength, enabling
Wilson to grasp all oriental lore, and Mackin-
tosh to soar in the empyrean of Philosophy and
History, without a single compeer in the land
of their adoption, and very few in the land that
gave them birth. Both mingled freely with the
natives, both were most tolerant of other men's
opinions, both were brilliant conversationalists,
r—
** We believe that in Dr. Wilson's library there was not a
single novel. º .
SIR. JAMES MACKINTOSH. 351
and both were easygoing and careless of their
own money to a degree. What shall we say
more ? That they never stooped to anything
mean or mercenary, that they never debased
their great gifts to the service of sin, that they
conquered their position by the hardest industry.
that ever issued from Highland or Lowland
home, that they never bartered away their
principles to the powers that be for a piece of
bread, and that at last they seemed to reach
“ that maturity of Inoral stature in which
the conflict between inclination and duty
is over, and virtue and self-indulgence
are the same.” Mackintosh was a great patriot,
great on the freedom of the slave and the liberty
of man,—on Wallace, on Tell, and Kosciusko ;
but Wilson’s ideal transcends the dreams of
philosophy, and argues a virtue beyond that of
the purest patriotism. It is not every man who
can refuse a comfortable settlement at home
when within his reach. It is not every man
who would divert away a gift from himself, to
even the noblest purposes of the University.*
Other men than Warren Hastings have had their
Daylesfords. Wilson had none to look forward
* Read the history of the foundation of the Wilson Philological
Lecture.
352 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
to in this world, except six square feet of earth in
the Marine Lines, of which he was at length, ful!
of years and of honours, duly infefted. The
valedictory cheer at the Apollo Bunder which
awaits the warrior and the statesman had no
charm for him, and he did not covet it. It is
this that endears Wilson to thousands of his
adopted countrymen, and will do so, we venture
to say, for generations to come; for to him.
was reserved this supreme distinction, that he,
and he alone of all the conspicuous characters
that adorn the history of Western India, Mackin-
tosh included, elected of his own free will,
when he was young and vigorous, to live and
die in India for the benefit of its people. To
this his life was consecrated, and for this he
died.
POONA AND THE PESHWAS,
A RETROSPECT.
45
355
OHAPTER XV.
POONA AND THE PESHWAS,
A RETROSPECT.
Say not thou : what is the cause that the former days were
better than these ? For thou dost not wisely enquire concerning
this.-Ecclesiastes VII. 10.
WHEN Sir James Mackintosh died those who
knew him best and were most capable of judging
said that he was the most learned man of his
age. During the present century we have had
living among us—one great general, one or two
celebrated statesmen, and one divine, ultimus
Romanorum, and many eminent men in almost
every department of human labour, but never
before or since have we had a man of so much
learning, and endowed with such a gift of com-
municating it to others.
He arrived in Bombay in May, 1804, and re-
sided here seven years.
On several occasions in his correspondence he
356 Book OF BOMBAY.
calls Bombay “the most obscure corner of In-
dia.” This surely could not have been the case
when we find Lord Nelson* (just five years pre-
viously), a few days after the battle of the Nile,
and while still suffering from a wound in his
head, sitting down to pen to the Governor of
Bombay the following lines:—
“I have Buonaparte's despatches now before
me. Bombay, if they can get there, I know is
their first object, but I trust the Almighty God
in Egypt will overthrow these pests of the
human race.
“Dated mouths of the Nile, 9th Aug. 1798.”
Bombay was then a city of 150,000 inhabi-
tants, and so great a centre of military opera-
tions was it that Mackintosh himself mentions
the fact that it contained an army of 25,000 men.
Sir James paid a visit to Poona in 1805.
When he arrived at Khandalla he felt, as every
man has done, a sense of relief from the unmiti-
gated heat in the plains below. It was the same
old road (now remodelled by Malcolm) by which
so many European pilgrims have found their way
to the Deccan during the last two hundred years.
And Berkeley in a range of two hundred miles
* Lord Nelson had a brother in the Indian Navy who was mur-
dered. His murderers were hanged on the Oyster Rock in Bom-
bay harbour.
POONA AND THE PESHWAS, 357
of the Sahyadree Hills could find no better open-
ing for the railway than through the gorges and
rocks of this Bhore Ghaut.
He was now at the watershed. It is recorded
that a traveller near the sources of the Amazon
ascended a spur of the Andes and descried there-
from the waters of the Pacific.
A similar phenomenon may be witnessed near
Lanowlee, where you may see the Bombay group
of islands, and the Western Ocean shining like
a silver band of light beyond them, while adja-
cent to you is one of the sources of a great
Indian river. This is the Indrayanee which be-
comes the Bheema, then the Kistna, but call it by
what name you please, every drop of surplus rain
which falls beyond Lanowlee goes into the Bay of
Bengal.
But we proceed to Poona.
Mackintosh was presented to Bajee Rao (the
man who died at Bithoor in 1851, the last of the
Peshwas), then in the ninth year of his reign,
and he afterwards made an extended tour in the
Deccan. His journals are exceedingly instruc-
tive as to the condition of the Deccan question,
and as to the rule of the Peshwas and we would
advise any malcontent who is not satisfied with
things as they are to ponder well his “firm con-
358 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
viction that the first blessing to be wished to the
inhabitants of India was that a civilised con-
queror might rescue them from their native
oppressors, and that they would find better
masters in the worst Europeans than in the best
of their own countrymen,” and he will discover
that his verdict is framed in strict accordance
with the facts of history. -
For in truth the Peshwas,excepting perhaps Ba-
lajee, had never done anything for the advance-
ment of mankind. To have large feet and long
arms and not to be able to sign your name were
qualities of the first mark among the Peshwas.
To see a man dragged to death at the foot of an
elephant was their amusement. There is not one
book, one piece of architecture that can be called
great, or even one notable work of utility, that
we can remember except the Kampolee Tank and
that was constructed by Nama Furnavese, their
Prime Minister. The Katrij aquaduct still con-
veys some water for six miles to Poona and fills
an artificial lake at the base of Parbutty which
would do no discredit to a second-rate German
watering place. * *
Bajee Rao planted a million of mango trees.
His father, Ruganath Rao, built a lofty tower on
Malabar Hill in which he lived in 1776 when
PoonA AND THE PESHWAS, 359
Pooma was too hot for him. But it has long since
disappeared. The remains of the Palace of Par-
butty and the Boodwar are very meagre speci-
mens of architecture; the one was struck by
fire from heaven in 1817, the other was lighted
up by the torch of an incendiary in 1879. A
solitary gateway is all that remains of the Som-
war Palace and a few pagodas complete the list.
There is an architecture in the Deccan which
piled up the battlements of Singhur and Poorun-
dhur. But the men who crowned the scarps of
Maharashtra with curtain loophole and embra-
sure were of a previous generation. Why the
Peshwas did nothing in the way of architecture
it is difficult to understand except on the supposi-
tion that the Mahratta Government was made to
be taken and destroyed, for there never was a
city more favourably placed than Poona to pro-
fit in skill and design in architecture, and
mone, we venture to say, has dome less by
its opportunities. Some of those works
which have delighted so many generations
were staring them in the face right and left.
The kings of Bejapoor had left them a dome
larger than St. Sophia or the Pantheon and the
Sultans of Ahmedabad minarets which surpass
those of Cairo in beauty of outline and richness
360 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
of detail. There was certainly no want of money,
and money then had twice the purchasing power
it has at present. The sack of Golkonda alone
in 1687 metted to Aurungzeb in hard cash 63
crores, a sum that would pay the cost of all the
buildings, private and public, in the Elphinstone
Circle and Esplanade of Bombay, with the fee.
simple thereof. The question has been asked why
Aurungzeb did nothing for Poona. He had
come of a family great in architecture. His
father had erected in Agra one of the archi-
tectural glories of the world, a perfect “ dream
in stone and lime,” and it is the mother of
Aurungzeb whose bones are ensepulchred in the
Taj Mahal. To whom much is given, of him
much shall be required.
He was essentially a man of the Deccan, if
anything can make a Deccany man. He was
born at Dohud (while his father, Shah Jehan,
was Soubadhar of the Deccan) in the Punch
Mahals, died at Ahmednugger, and was buried at
Rosa, near Dowlatabad, the key of the Deccan,
and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. He.
spent the last twenty years of his life in the
Deccan. He had been at, if not in, Poona. He
had executed the son of Seevajee within 15 miles
POONA AND THE PESHWAS. 361
of Poona.* His grandson had died in Poona and
he had changed the name of it. A wife and a
daughter are buried at Bejapoor, and his young-
est and favourite son was slain in battle at Hy-
derabad in the Deccan.
The truth is, he looked upon Poona as the
home of that “hell dog Seevajee,” “the mountain
rat,” and his infernal Mawulees who embittered his
existence and hastened the downfall of his empire.
To bribe Singhur, to batter Poorundhur, to esca-
lade Torna, to knock down (or attempt it) every
Mahratta fort in his way was his meat and drink.
He had no time to build. If he erected anything
it has fallen to pieces, and Torna and Rajghur
are as gaunt and weird as on the day they defied
the “Lord of the World.” Useless as they are—
“Time that doth all things else impair,
Still makes them flourish strong and fair.”
Pooma is described in these days as “situated
on a treeless plain.” Not altogether on a tree-
less plain now, as any one may satisfy himself
by ascending the heights of Kirkee or the tower
of Gumeshkhind. Poona on a treeless plain.
So are some of the most renowned cities of the
world : Damascus from Lebanon has been com-
* At the junction of the Indrayani with the Bhima. The In-
drayanee is the river which the traveller sees from the railway on
his left at Kurkalla en rowte to Poona, conspicuous enough
during the monsoon.
46
362 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
pared to an emerald. But who cares about
Poona, the Neera, the Kistna, the Moota, and the
Moola? And yet Abana and Pharpar themselves do
not fertilise so much land nor feed so many people.
Men have raved for ages about Damascus, but
given a history from the days of Abraham and a
few gilded domes and minarets, and Poona
from Singhur just after the monsoon, might vie
in beauty with Damascus from Mount Lebanon.
And there is no want of roses.
Seventy years ago you might travel a whole
day without meeting a man, woman, or child on
the high road to Poona. It was the days of
“Shamgar.” “The high ways were unoccupied
and the travellers walked through byeways,” and
you might go over a thousand miles of country
without seeing a detached bungalow or an un-
walled village. You can still see marks of this
insecurity stamped in uneffaceable lines on the
broadlands of the Deccan. Why is the ground
better cultivated at a distance from roads 2
Why are the dwellings of substantial men like
the meanest huts on the side you approach them 2
Simply to evade the Pindaree and the freebooter
—the custom having survived long after the
object has passed away. Seventy years ago
more rent could be obtained for land in the
IPOONA AND THE PESHWAS. 363
secluded glens of the Neera, than at the gates of
Poona, where it was worthless, the executive
being insufficient to protect an occupant from
plunder and devastation.
Life and property had no security. Seventy
years ago there was not a court of judicature nor
a judge in the whole Mahratta dominions.”
Education like their alphabet at school was not
only written in but built upon sand, and there
seemed a curse on their social system from its
basement to its topmost story.
“The havildar’’—we adopt the Muslim names
—“ plundered the villager and was himself plum-
dered by the Zemindar, the Zemindar by the
Fouzdar, the Fouzdar by his Nabob or Dewan,
and the Dewan by the Peshwa. The mechanic
only worked to the measure of his necessities. If
he saved money it was taken from him. If he
possessedskill he was seized by some men in autho-
rity and made to work night and day. When this
gradation was interrupted it meant bloodshed.”
Seevajee when importuned as to the condition
of the common people said with contempt, “give
them a dhotie it is enough,” and the historian of
the Mahrattas has left this sentence on the
proudest period of their dominion, a “system of
* We do not forget the Punchayets.
364, BOOK OF BOMBAY,
plunder and violence had been universal for a
period exceeding the life of man.”
The age of Seeyajee has been glorified by igno-
rant and designing men, and certain it is that in
his time, no man or woman suffered death for
religion—that the mosque was inviolate and the
Koran respected,—facts which redound to his
eternal credit, at a time when toleration was
neither practised nor understood in civilised Eu-
rope. But on the “condition of the people *
question, with which we have now to do, let us,
by way of illustration, compare it with the worst
period of misgovernment in the history of Scot-
land. We make bold to say that the Scotch
Covenanter of the reign of Charles the Second
would have stood aghast at the spectacle, not un-
common in the Deccan, of a man ploughing with
a loaded matchlock slung behind his back. And
of John Brown of Priesthill, the Ayrshire Car-
rier—if the Deccan could have produced such a
man what would have been the verdict f
“ Died beside his own pack-horse of sheer
vexation at the tolls l’” Imposts were heaped up
until they doubled the original cost of merchan-
dise, and political martyrs fell in numbers, re-
sisting fiscal iniquity and oppression.
There was a proverb in Seevajee’s time among
his people.
“ Deccan is the bread of military men.” Exact-
PoonA AND THE PESHWAs. 365
ly so : the bread of Swashbucklers and Bud-
mashes. -
It seems as far as we can make out to have
been the bread of nobody else.
But it had been nearly the same from untold
ages. The earliest European traveller in the
Deccan, of whom wehave any knowledge 400 years
since, and strange to say a Russian, notes “ the
people are very miserable; they walk on foot and
walk fast.” This last is a straw that lets us know
how the wind blew over these Deccany plains in the
olden times, and nothing has survived the wreck of
forts and mud built huts equal to it in importance.
The well disposed were anxious to get to their
destimation and the intended victim was hurry-
ing from his pursuer. Of some it might be said
“ their feet are swift to shed blood * and of all
“ the way of peace have they not known.” It
was, indeed, a cursed regime, where of the “ all
things ’’ of which Adam Smith says “labour is
the first price and original purchase-money,” the
only one thing resultant to rich and poor was
a life of extremest misery and oppression.
The system affected alike rich and poor. In 1798
the richest shroffs of Poona were tortured to death,
one of the most influential of their number expir-
ing on a heated gun. There are men still living
who recollect from 1826 to 1830, so far did its
366 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
baneful influence extend into the present century.
In these years Dhun RajSeth,TarachundSetaram,
and other shroffs of Bombay, Poona, and Surat had
64 of their money carriers murdered by Thugs and
their property carried away. We need not wonder
that all confidence between man and man was
lost. Mahrattain Mahratta, Mahrattain English-
man, Englishman in Mahratta, it was all the same.
The culminating point was reached in 1804
when the Duke of Wellington penned these
memorable words :-
“From the Peshwa down to the lowest cooly
in the bazaar in Poona there is not a Mahratta
in whom it is possible to rely that he will per-
form any engagement upon which he enters unless
urged to the performance by his fears.”
This is all the Peshwas can show after a rule
of over one hundred years. -
This is the judgment of a great man on the
tottering Empire whose Deccany horses had once
quenched their thirst in the waters of the Indus and
the Hoogly, and whose right to exact tribute had
been acknowledged on the banks of the Coleroon.
One word—a praiseworthy word it used to be
among the Mahrattas—is stamped on the fore-
head of every Peshwa, and that word is deceit.
Their rule began in deceit and ended in deceit.
It began with Seevajee’s murder of Afzul Khan
POONA AND THE PESHWAS, 367
and ended amid the flames of the British Resi-
dency at the Sungum.
It dates from the first day of their existence in
1656 when that Master of Duplicity, Seevajee,
decked the brow of the first Mahratta Peshwa -
with the name, to the last day of their sovereignty
in 1817, when from a window in the Palace
of Parbutty, Bajee Rao saw the battle of Kirkee
with which their dominion passed away.
Their fate was strange. Balajee Bajee Rao
died after hearing the fatal message from the
field of Paniput in 1761.
“2 pearls dissolved, 27 gold mohurs lost, copper
âncalculable.” Bajee Rao died an exile in our
own day. Of his two immediate predecessors one
committed suicide by throwing himself from the
top of his castle in Poona. The other was
murdered, it is said, by Bajee Rao's father Ruga-
math Rao in the same place.
But we return to Mackintosh.
For a time he lived in Tarala (a Sanscrit
compound denoting Palm Green) Mazagon.
From this bungalow there is a magnificent view
all round—a perfect panorama of Bombay—land
and sea, and it is now, we may add, resplendent
with the green and gold of the Hönourable By-
ramjee Jeejeebhoy. But from 1804 to 1808 this
distinguished man lived at Government House,
© UCy - -- ~ vax U1' BOMBAY,
Parell, Governor Duncan having given it up to
him. It was here he penned his brilliant cor-
respondence with those celebrated men, Dugald
Stewart, Francis Horner, Lord Holland, John
Allen, Robert Hall, and Flaxman. This was
what he modestly, but elegantly expressed as
reviving the spirit of ancient Indian commerce
by exchanging the drugs of India for the ster-
ling money of Europe. It was to this house
he asked the great pulpit orator Robert Hall
to share his retirement and come and live with
him. In its rooms he read Milton, Addison, and
Virgil to his children, and on its verandahs and
broad walks might after night, he pondered on
philosophy and meditated on his contributions
to the history of England.
Doubtless in after years his mind often wan-
dered back to what had once been the centre of
his affections and household gods, from the day
he wrote his first letter, dated Parell, “ in the
most obscure corner of India, but forget me
not, forget me not ” to the entry in his journal
which records his last dinner party there, when
the words “poor Parell” were wrung from his
lips and the scene closed upon him for ever.
SEEWAJEES FORTS.
47
371
CHAPTER XVI.
SEEWAJEE’S FORTS.
TORNA,
“Her ancient weed was russet gray,
And wrinkled was her brow.”
ToRNA is about 37 miles from Poona. You
can see it from the Library door over-looking the
end of Singhur to the right. You can ride and
walk to Pet, a village at the foot of the hill, in a
day, ascend next morning, and do Rajghur,
which is three miles from it, on the same day.
We did not count on the roughness of the way
to it, for when we left our carriage at Gora, two
miles from the junction of the Singhur road at
Kurukwasla, we purposed doing the rest on a
Deccany tattoo, to the foot of the hill. We soon,
however, found out that for the greater part of
the way our “shanks” was the only possible
372 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
mode of locomotion. Night found us on the
slopes of the Bore Ghaut, the range of wavy hills
which the traveller sees from Singhur,
“Ribbed as the shifting sand you see ;”
and below, the valley of Kanind, which divides us
from the Torna and the Rajghur range. We had
sent on our coolies a day ahead, and missed them
among the hills, and had made up our mind to
remain where we were until daylight. But our
men were capital “ night howlers,” and shouted
continually their long-drawn Rama Ho Rama-a-a,
a cry So well known in the mountain regions of
the Deccan that its echoes and the waving of our
lights attracted the attention of some drowsy
Dungurs, who eventually came to our relief.
Grass-torches were lighted, which were fed con-
tinuously, and blazed high a lurid light above
our heads, and so we were piloted from ledge to
ledge, among boulders and loose stones, the dry
bed of a monsoon torrent,<-a four mile track, to
our destination. I am sure that if Bunyan in his
Pilgrim’s Progress had “alighted ” upon such a
place, he would never have seen the New Jeru-
salem. Visions of General Wade, Burns’s “ rid-
dlings of Creation,” the Auld Wives Lift,
Adam’s Tomb at Tobermory, with a free coup in
the Ninestane Burn came before us. The Duke
SEEVAJEE’s FoETs—TORNA. 373
of Wellington uttered three groans in this Pre-
sidency. The first was when he received quinine
instead of iron, the second was when he wished
to God he had never had anything to do with the
Bombay Government, and the third was when he
was detained six hours in the dark in this Bore
Ghaut (a topographical mistake as will be seen
in the paper on Wellington) among cactus bushes,
twenty miles from Poona, when he was hurrying
on, in his celebrated forced march, to save that
city from the fire and sword of Amrut Rao in
1803. *
He says, Poona, 20th April 1803, “I made a
forced march of above forty miles last night
with the cavalry (1,700) and a battalion, and
I was detained about six hours in the Bore
Ghaut.” -
Snatching a few hours’ repose in a temple of
Ramswamy, we were awake at three, and soon on
our road. It was a beautiful moonlight morn-
ing, and, in a four miles walk up the Kanind
Valley, the only sound we heard was the cry of
the owl. The drowsy watchers of the green crops
—human scarecrows, in their thatched habita-
tions—could not make out our somewhat un-
earthly visitation.
Looking up in the wan moonlight, the
374 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
bastions of Torma were frowning above our
heads:—
“In lonely glens ye Hike to stray,
Or where auld ruined castles gray
Nod to the moon.”
This was Burns’s “address to the Deil,” but for
the moment we accept it. At Pet we obtained
guides to go up the hill. It took three hours
walking, climbing, and scrambling to attain our
object. The long flight of almost perpendicular
steps for about three hundred feet worn and
much displaced; or holes cut in the rock, indu-
rated by use, time, and the elements were at
length surmounted, and at 7 o’clock on the morn-
ing of New Year’s Day, 1880, we were battering
at the gates of Torna, first foot, at all events, in
this region: But the withered hag was as deaf
as Ailsa Craig. We may add that, owing to the
angle of ascent, the gateway was quite invisible to
the eye until we were within a few feet of it, and
that in one instance the rock jutted out sheer
over our heads.
An event here transpired that we did not anti-
cipate. The door was shut—barred—and there
was no reply. We had thus time to sit down
with a feeling of relief and “rest and be thank-
ful,” and leisurely survey the spot on which we
SEEvajFE's ForTs—TornA. 375
were perched. The folding spiked doors were
enclosed by a fine piece of arched masonry, a
veritable “strength of stone,” or munition of
rocks. -
It was a curious recess, formed by nature be-
tween two scarped rocks. At some geologic
period the crest of Torna had been rent asunder,
leaving this cleft, “ the door of Torna,” in the
rock. Or had the elements of wind and water
been doing their work?
“Who was it scooped these stony waves,
Or scalp'd the brow of old Cairngorm,
And dug these ever-yawning caves?
w 'Twas I, the spirit of the Storm.”
We did get an entrance eventually, but by what
means we are not now going to say. It was
neither storm, escalade, nor capitulation. It led,
however, to a correspondence between the Punt
of Bore and the British Government, but the mat-
ter was amicably adjusted. So we made our way
to the second gate, which enclosed the Balla
Killa, or upper fort, where the beleagured could
retire in case of need.
Here our shouts were heard and a fine looking
youth opened the bars and let us in, and led us
to a hut on the summit of the hill. His father,
an old man, was at the door, evidently offering
376 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
up his orisons to the Tulsi plant. But when he
caught sight of us, he threw down his kumlee or
blanket, and staggered into his dwelling. It was
Elymas the sorcerer, struck with blindness in the
cartoon of Raphael. You might have led him
with a straw. How two European budmashas—
one with a fowling-piece—could have reached his
door, was more than he could comprehend. By
our mild persuasive speech he, however, recover-
ed himself and eventually came out with a digni-
fied salaam ; clothed, and in his right-mind. He
was an old man, weather-beaten by innumerable
monsoons, but as ruddy as a winter apple. He
told us that His Excellency the Governor had
been there, and showed us where he had sat. His
Highness the Punt of Bore, in whose territories
Torna is, had come to the foot of the hill, looked
up, shook his head, and departed. We did not
see beast or bird, tame or wild (crow or sparrow),
except a diminutive cat, licking itself smaller and
smaller to inevitable death when the fauna and
ferae of Torna will be utterly extinct. We did
not see Seevajee. He had been once here, dug
up a marvellous amount of Venetian sequins, gold
bars, and sycee silver, and a more unlikely place
to find such things we cannot imagine. He took
this place when he was a lad of nineteen, and it
sBEvAJEE’s ForTs—TORNA. 377
was well he did so when his bones were supple,
and his climbing powers were at the best. Had
he waited until his fifty-third year, when he had
that bad swelling in the knee-joint which ulti-
mately carried him off at Raighur, he mever would
have done it. We were two centuries too late to
see him, otherwise we might have interviewed him
in the language of the Scotch Ballad, with the
alteration of two words only—
“As I was walking all alane
Atween a castle and a wa',
Othere I met a wee, wee man,
And he was the least I ever saw.
His legs were half an ellwand lang
And thick and thimber was his thie,
Atween his brows there was a span,
And at ween his shouthers there was three,
He took up a muckle stane,
And flang’t as far as I could see,
Though I had been a giant born
I could na lift it to my knee.
O wee, wee man, ye’re wonder strong.”
But leaving romance, we must pull a long face as
we approach the domain of history.
Torna is a spot of surpassing interest. It was
Seevajee’s first conquest, thenucleus around which
all the others clustered, making it virtually the
cradle of that Mahratta empire which shook the
throne of the Great Moghul. It has been the
#8
378 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
scene of many bloody conflicts. On one oc-
casion it was escaladed during the might, and
carried sword in hand. This was in 1701. It is
specially mentioned that this fort was strengthen-
ed and repaired by Seevajee, and we have come to
the conclusion that he was not a great builder.
The stone and lime in many places are not well
put together, which may be very easily accounted
for by the troublous times in which he lived.
Nehemiah’s re-building the walls of Jerusalem,
as described by a Scots preacher—“A whinger
in the ae hand and a theeking spurtle in the
ither”—is an exact, though coarse, picture of the
situation of Seevajee. Torna, therefore, does not
rival the great works of his predecessors, for
there are piles of mason work in the Deccan
which equal in grandeur the hoary ruins of
Tantallon or Dunottar. Hence everything is
going to ruin, piles of teak heaped together,
masses of stones confusedly lying about, half
filled tanks, moss grown barracks make up a
picture of desolation.
The Doomdzermal, a long spur fortified in
some places, only a few feet wide, like a very
long canoe in appearance from the parapet, is
very striking, but not the only one of its kind
among the Deccan forts. The aneroid barometer
SEEVAJEE’s FORTS-ToRNA. 379
shows we are 4,350 ft. above sea level. There is,
therefore, a great and glorious panorama around
us. If Singhur is the Lion’s Den, Torna is the
Eagle's Nest. From our eyrie we may descry
St. Mary’s Church at Poona, the Bishop's
bungalow on Mount Malcolm, and John Sand’s
bomb-proof hospice on the crest of Poorundhur,
with the kala panee visible at sunset. To one
who has never seen them, the Mahableshwur
range and the enormous block of Raighur, the
scene of Seevajee’s coronation and death, are
novel and interesting. The natives of this
country are our masters in the art of climbing.
We envy them their endurance, but still more
their machinery of heart and lungs. They do
not know what it is to be “ out of breath,” or
“ pumped out.” As we came to the gate by
which we entered a policeman made his appear-
ance. His long pull upstairs did not seem to
bother him, and he was perfectly unruffled
in speech and behaviour, as he politely prof-
fered his services to us. He left the gate ajar,
and from the little platform inside where we
stood we caught a peep of what was before us.
The vignette was very lovely,–the ground floor
of the world or a map of Asia Minor, but we
begged him to shut out the vision for a minute
as we would have enough of it.
380 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Some one has written that “Torma is perfectly
safe to those whose nerves are not affected by a
precipice above and a gorge below.” So with
this soothing emollient we proceed. The Be-
douins do not use chairs, and we have heard
them say that as we are ultimately to go into the
earth, we may as well sit on it occasionally—in
fact, make use of it, by way of accustoming our-
selves to it. Our proclivities being earthwards,
we therefore sit down as inert a mass of clay as
we can make of ourselves in this sentient breath-
ing universe, and paddle our own canoe down
the notched rapids.” There are some very nasty
bits, but, as the Governor did not complain, we
are not going to do so. The risks are : stumbles,
false footings, slips, stepping on loose stones or
grass waving above nonentity, lurches outwards,
grasping tufts or twigs that come away in the
hand, and a tendency in stout parties to roll over
and over, of which there could be only one ter.
mination, Then there are slopes, slides, devil’s
elbows, with slanting declinations downwards.
All roads lead to Rome, and these are of them
plus gravitation. So we get up and advise all
those who have legs to use them in the laudable
* See Some of Whymper's admirable Alpine sketches to illus-
trate this.
SEEvAJEE’s FORTs—Tor NA. 38]
and muscular effort of keeping body and soul
together, by planting their feet and hands in such
places as art or instinct dictates, and so by grap-
pling rock or bush, and always “making an
effort” and avoiding whisky, they will soon find
their way to a good breakfast by midday at the
foot of Torna. Richard Burton, when in Bom-
bay, suggested the formation of an Alpine Club.
There is plenty of scope in the Ghauts and
Deccan. We could not advise any promoters of
such a scheme for information to a better man
than James Burgess, chief of the Archaeological
Survey. He knows almost every hill for a hun-
dred miles round. He is a better pedestrian than
Captain Grose. Besides—
“He has a fouth o'auld nicknackets;
Rusty airn caps and jingling jackets
Wald haud the Lothians three in tackets
A tow mont gude
And parritch pats and auld saut backets,
IBefore the Flood.”
382
THE FORT OF RAJMACHEE, NEAR
KHANDALA. -
THE BOMBAY FORTS
Were founded on violence. Many of them.
were built as fastnesses by the first Arab or
Moghul invaders. They were not built like the
great structures, for example, on the Esplanade
which we have seen rising year after year, and
where the workmen received a fair day’s wages
for a fair day’s work. We have no building con-
structed by forced labour in the Island of Bom-
bay. Our oldest building, the Cathedral, was
built by subscription, and the list lies before us,
a few jottings from which we give in a foot-note*
* Some of the entries in the list of subscriptions to the new
Church show the liberality of the donors, and others are curious
as illustrating the manners of the age. The Company’s contri-
bution was ten thousand rupees, Governor Boone, who succeeded
IMr. Aislabie, gave in various sums Rs. 3,918, and Mr. Cobbe, the
clergyman, Rs. 1,427—subscriptions more in proportion to the
profits which they made by private transactions than to the
limited amount of their salaries. Among other entries are, “a
fine upon Bhundarries Rs. 18, and a fine inflicted on Joseph Hor-
mall for a misdemeanour ; given by the Governor's order.” The
*::::::: amount of the sacramental collections made every month
was about Rs. 29, of those made on Christmas day Rs. 72, on
Easter day Rs. 39, and on Whitsunday Rs. 34. “A commutation
SEEVAJEE’s FoETs—RAJMACHEE. 383
This was nearly two centuries ago, and it has
been the same ever since. Whether by sub-
scription or the State, the workman has been paid
his wages ; and as these buildings were not
founded on violence, we can aver that their walls
have not been stained with blood or crime. Crime
is a fearful factor in the tradition and history of
old buildings. Witness our own Tower of Lon-
don, and Holyrood where the blood of Rizzio
still cries for vengeance and half-crowns. But
in Bombay you cannot point to a single building
where a martyr, political or religious, has been
immured, or a Hindoo or a Moslem put to death.
Now the forts of the Deccan, and we are bold
to say the splendours of Bijapur,f owe their
existence to forced labour, to the labour exacted
molens volens by the Lord Paramount, be he
for penance corporal” at Surat was Rs. 150. Cornelius Sodington
gives “for my wife, when I have her, Rs. 20; and Mr. Richard
Waters Rs. 11, which were allowed him by Mr. Cobbe for per-
forming divine services when the said chaplain was on a visit to
Surat. The names on the list of those worthy of remark are Mr.
George Bowcher, who gave Rs. 200 in addition to what he had
contributed about 30 years before in Sir John Child’s days ; of
Alexander Hamilton, to whom we are So much indebted for our
acquaintance with his times, and who gave RS. 80 for himself and
Rs. 50 on account of his ship the Morning Star ; and of Cunsha.
Chungua China, men, the one of whom Subscribed Rs. 150, the
other Rs. 90. The total amount collected was Rs. 43,992 or £5,499
(good remitting exchange in these days). Mr. Boone gave the
handsome bell which still tolls its summons to the Christians of
the neighbourhood.—Bombay Qwarterly Review, Vol. III.
# The Ibrahim Roza cost £528,150 sterling, 6,533 workmen were
employed; time occupied in construction 36 years 11 months and
11 days.—From inscription quoted in “Architecture at Bijapur,”
by Meadows Taylor and James Fergusson, 1866.
384 BOOK OF BOM BAY,
king or killidar. Now-a-days you can either
work or stay away. But there were no indus-
tries in those olden times which a man could fall
back upon from the violence of the oppressor.
The people were thirled to their masters, and
their “meal and malt ’’ ground out of them until
the lust or ambition of their governors was satis-
fied. If a man in those days were a skilful work-
man, the fact was soon found out, the wages of
mere subsistence were doled out, to him, and
his surplus earnings pounced upon by the
Ruler. There is not a single fort in the
entire Deccan which, if its history is looked
into, will not be found to be stained with blood
and crime. They were all busy weaving the
crimson web of war.
“See the griesly texture grow,
'Tis of human entrails made,
And the weights that play below
Each a gasping warrior's head.”
There is a tradition that the Fort of Satara
was founded on human sacrifice, and the place is
shown where a son and daughter of the chief
Mahar were built in the wall. This may be true
or untrue. But it is within the domain of his-
tory that the man from whom the then Peshwa
received investiture, Rajah of Satara as he was,
SEEVAJEE’s FORTS-RAJMACHEE. 385
and great grandson of Seevajee himself, was kept
in a dungeon of it for eleven years and fed on
bread and water. It is within the domain of
history that the Angrias sewed up members of
their family in sacks and threw them down the
steep cliffs of Sagurghur, and everybody who has
read “Tara, ’’ or been at Mahableshwur knows
of Purtabghur and the gory head of Afzulkhan.
But the list is endless : Asseerghur, Dowlatabad,
Raighur, and Singhur, ad infinitum.
THE ROAD TO IT.
Rajmachee was once taken and held by Seevajee
(1648), after he had seized a great loot from a
Government Kaphila near Callian on its way to
Bejapoor. This was the first blow he struck at
the majesty of Empire ; and when one wanders
for days among the ruins, still enormous in
magnitude and extent, of the capital, one is con-
founded with the audacity which prompted a
single individual to measure his strength with
the resources of such a kingdom as Bejapoor. It
was the combat of Achilles with Hector; and the
swift-footed Seevajee in the end gained the day.
His dwelling was among the rocks, and his
strength the everlasting hills. It was then that
the Deccany forts made their great name in his-
49 -
386 JBOOK OF BOMBAY.
tory. Called into existence in a semi-barbarous
age, when men felt secure only on the tops of the
highest mountains, in the hands of the hardy
Mawullees of Seevajee, they probed Bejapoor on
the one hand, and Delhi on the other, to the
quick. Every wild foray seemed to add to their
prestige, and when brought to bay, as they were
occasionally, the cry was
“Come one, come all ! This rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I.”
At length in the course of time they found
themselves masters, and Mahratta Dominion
added a new chapter to history. But it was the
old story. Conquest precedes luxury, and luxury
precedes decline. The Brahmin in Poona was
not a whit wiser than the Moslem in Bejapoor.
The experience by which he might have profited
was a dead letter to him, for that history which
teacheth by examples had come and gone ere
Poona became the capital of the Mahratta Empire.
The Adil Shah dynasty was an old-wives' fable
to him, and unwarned by its doom, the Peshwas
prosecuted the same career of vice and de-
bauchery without a tittle of its elegance or refine-
ment, for the master-builders of Bejapoor have
left behind them miles of majestic memorials
which still engage the attention of the connois-
SEEVAJEE’s FORTS-RAJMACHEE. 387
£)
seur. The game, however, went on, and we know
the termination of these things.
“The gates of hell are open night and day,
Smooth the descent and easy is the way.”
The traveller who proceeds to Poona by rail,
as he nears Kurjut, must have observed a high
hill on his left crowned with bastions and en-
circled with lines of circumvallation. He will
see more of it, as he emerges from the tunnel
where the great Khandala gorge bursts conspi-
cuously on his view ; and where the carriages
seem to creep along the edge of dizzy precipices,
this giant again meets the eye of the specta-
tor. It is now observable that there are two
hills, and if the day is clear, bastion and curtain
are quite visible to the naked eye, on either
of them.
This is the Fort of Rajmachee, which, though
not much noticed in history, is more familiar to
the eye of dwellers in these parts than any other
fort in the Bombay Presidency, and will doubt-
less continue to be so. The scenery here is some-
times one of marvellous beauty, and in the grey
dawn of early morn, so familiar to us, presents
shifting pictures, as grand and beautiful as
Glencoe or Killiecrankie. The best place from
which the tourist can attack this fort is Khan-
388 BOOK OF BOMBAYo
dala. He can “do” it in one day, but it will
be a long day, from dawn to dewy eve. A better
way would be to take a resai and plaid, and
sleep in the open all night, and rise refreshed for
the work of inspecting both forts by sunrise.
We did it in one day, but it is too much for the
ordinary pleasure-seeker to demand of him a
start at day-light, a tramp over roughish ground
for twelve miles, and then half-an-hour of tough
work in which all his sinews will be exercised
and put to proof, and then to beat a retreat to
Khandala, when he will be fortunate if he is not
belated. If it becomes dark or moonlight—for
even the moon projects distances to which the
eye and foot are unused—the difficulties increase
tenfold, and stumbling among rocks and thorny
bushes, even under the guidance of experienced
coolies, brings out infirmities in body and mind
that are quite astonishing. The place is well
worth seeing, besides the healthful exercise the
trip affords, and the path to it is simply charm-
ing. For a part of the way you creep along a
monkey path which fringes the plateau which
faces you when in the railway train, on the oppo-
site side of the abyss. By-and-bye you skirt the
foot of immense walls of rock, those great sheets
of trap rising perpendicularly three hundred feet
SEEVAJEE’s FORTS-RAJMACHEE. 389
high which constitute the barriers of the Deccan,
and its water-shed.
About five miles from Khandala there is a
splendid place for a pic-nic, and as tats can do
most of this distance, it is all easy work, and to
those who enjoy fine scenery and bracing air a
morning in December or January in that quarter
will not easily be forgotten. There is a con-
siderable amount of cutivated ground at the foot
of the cone of Rajmachee which is walled round;
the enclosure constituting the pettah, or what we
should call the grange land of the baron’s castle
whence the inmates derived their supplies : forage
for horses and cattle, food for man, and fuel.
The walls, we are told on the best authority,
extend 5,258 yards in length, or three miles.
They are therefore as extensive as those round
the great Fort of Dowlatabad. As we round
the base of the block on which the main fort
is built, and look up, the view is bizarre
and extraordinary, and must have impressed
the beholder with much awe and sinking of spirit.
The rock here, in colour as black as night, rises
sixty feet or more, sheer, when it bellies outward,
in an abrupt overhanging corporation, ending
two or theee hundred feet from the ground where
we stand, on the ramparts which are so built as to
390 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
meet the edge of the scarp. You cannot tell where
the precipice ends and the bastion begins, but one
or two loopholes, by all the world like the mouth
and eyes of some pietured demon, reveal to us this
ancient habitation of Seevajee and the Angria.
When you do get into it, there is not much ; so
Rajmachee, -
“Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies.”
But we are not there yet. As we round the
cone, the difficulties begin. We know well
enough what broken-up staircases are when a
hundred feet of them are converted into avalan-
ches of rubbish and loose stones shot down a hill-
face at an angle of 35°. You have plenty of that
on Raighur and Torna. Here you have the stone
stairs kicked about in the wildest confusion,
loose and moveable, their interstices a mass of
yielding grit. On this blasted peak we found a
grass, or straw, or came in great profusion.
What had been forced into maturity by the wild
lashing rains of the monsoon now lay in withered
swathes, kindly placed for us on those moving
masses of whinstone rhomboids resting on a basis
of grit, as smooth as the China matting of the
Byculla Club. There was no danger to life, but
very much to limb; so the instinct of self-preser-
vation induced each man to “gang his own
sEEvAJEE’s ForTs—RAJMACHEE. 391
gait,” and so not commit murder on the man
that was beneath him. Once we got fairly
wedged in the hollow of a double wall, for in
some places there is a triple belt round the hill,
and were advised by a native—there are natives
here who, like oysters, stick to the rock—to clam-
ber cat-like along the crumbling parapet. But it
was too shifting a material on which to trust our
corporations,” so what with hard pulling and
tumbling, climbing and scrambling, we at length
found ourselves, not, as the reader will have seen,
“without impediment,” in “the bowels '' of
Rajmachee. Here are rock-cut cisterns and
plenty of the purest water.
THE LOOK-OUT.
We are now 2,730 feet above sea-level (about
the height of Matheran), lower fort 2,540.
Rajmachee means the Royal terrace. It looks
down upon the Konkan. The ancients of this
place, in their shirts of mail, could look down
* DANGER FROM IOOSE WALLS.–The ruins of Montpezer,
six miles from Bassein. “From the wall of the hermitage Mr.
J. Forbes met his death a few years ago. He, it seems, impru-
dently climbed the wall at a corner with his boots on, where the
roots of a pepul-tree served as a ladder. He got safely to the top,
and after sitting for a while on the wall admiring the surround-
ing prospect, in the act of rising, it is supposed, part of the crumb-
ling Wall giving way under his feet, he slipped and was precipi-
tated into the court of the temple below, a height of between
sixty and seventy feet. He never spoke afterwards, but was
garried home to Bombay, senseless, and died the same evening.--
ºped in 1838, quoted in Dr. Da Cwmha’s “Chawl and Basscºm.”
392 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
and see all that was going on in the plains
below. The Bhore Ghaut was the same then as
it is now, not only in physical contour and con-
formation, but absolutely the only pass through
which all the commerce of the Bombay Har-
bour passed to the Deccan. The railway
makes no difference in this respect; commerce is
friendly, but war is unfriendly, so sometimes an
enemy came, and Rajmachee kept an outlook on
him. Kotlighur stood guard below, but Rajmachee
was the great bull’s-eye lantern held in the face
of friend or foe, and flashed upon every man who
came from those lower Konkan regions. “Who’s
there?” was the watchword of Rajmachee. God
keep the country, when its vigilance committee
is perched up in places like this. We can verify
the fact that a great extent of landscape can be
seen from Rajmachee. But the following are the
places that on a clear day may be easily descried.
As for the Duke’s Nose, Matheran, Bowmullung,
Prubhul, and Kurmala, they are barely worth
mentioning, -the mere kernel of a grand pano-
rama. Our guide sung out to us Toong, Tikona,
Loghur. But even they are nothing when
Beemashunkur is in view; and Hurischandraghur
where you may lie on the edge of the precipice,
drop a stone, and find it takes eleven seconds to
SEEvAJEE’s ForTs—RAJMACHEE. 393
strike the bottom ; Nagotna ; our old friend of
sewing-up-in-sacks notoriety Sagurghur, with the
sun setting at Alibagh; and there is Toongar
and the Salsette Hills, and across the flat sow-
backed Purbhul the harbour, island, and city of
Bombay. The upper fort is called Shreevardhan,
which means, we understand, “increase of pros-
perity;” the lower fort, in like manner, Mun-
runjun, “mind pleasing.” The first commands
the second, which is as it should be, for without
prosperity either of body or soul there can be no
permanent pleasure of the mind whatever. We
looked round for a seat, but the killidar was
dead, and we had no Collector to send us a chair
and a table as we had at Raighur last new year.
Laird o'Bucklyvie,
May the devil rive ye
For biggin sic a toun
Where there’s neither a table
Nor a chair, nor a stule to sit doun.
And with this irreverent snatch we bid good-bye
to Rajmachee. This fort was taken by Colonel
Prother on the 6th March, 1818.
CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.
Under this head we will select two dates. The
first is the period of the “Noble Queen’’ Chand
Beebee, at the close of the sixteenth century.
50
394 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
Meadows Taylor cannot be accused, with all
his gorgeous descriptions of the bravery of
those times, of overstating the violence to
which life and property were exposed. The
neighbourhood is Goolburgah.
“ The place had an evil reputation for robbers
at all times. There were not only the ordinary
cutpurses and pick-pockets, pilchers, and might
prowlers of such gatherings, but there were
thugs from the neighbouring country of Allund,
Gungooty and Kulhavee, as well as those who
lived in the city itself, carrying on apparently
homest trades and occupations, who marked
parties for plunder, joined with them as they
departed homewards, and slew them when they
had gone a little distance with them. For
miles, indeed, in every direction, were the un-
hallowed graves of hundreds and thousands, per-
haps, of those who had been decoyed or destroyed.
There were, too, dacoits who attacked the lodgings
of pilgrims, or waylaid them on the high roads, and
plundered with little regard to consequences.
Among the latter were many Jatts and Kaikarees,
peaceful-looking people by day, but terrible by
night.”
Our next author is Grant Duff, the place is
Poona, the time is the close of the eighteenth
century, and the man described is the Police
sEEvAJEE’s FORTS-RAJMACHIEE. 395.
Superintendent of that city :—“No instance of
greater neglect on the part of an administration,
or of more extraordinary criminality in a sub-
ordinate officer, is recorded in the ammals of any
State than in the case of Gassee Ram, Kotwal,
or Police Superintendent of the city of Poona.
This man, a Brahmin, native of Hindoostan, em-
ployed the power with which he was vested in
perpetrating the most dreadful murders. People
disappeared and no trace of them could be found.
Gassee Ram was suspected, but Nana. Furnuwees
refused to listen to complaints, apparently absurd
from their unexampled atrocity. At last, it being
suspected that Gassee Ram was starving a
respectable Brahmin to death, Mamajee Phakray,
headed a party of the people, broke open the
prison, and rescued the unfortunate Brahmin,
which led to the detection of the monster’s
crimes, and he fell a victim to the vengeance of
the exasperated populace, by whom he was
stoned to death.”
Behold in these extracts from the historian
and novelist how people lived for two hundred
years under the shadow of the Deccany forts.
STREAMS.
As we neared our home, we crossed a stream
with a rocky bed. It is a stream which, after
396 |HOOK OF BOMBAY,
this, leaps from shelf to shelf until it makes that
final plunge which we see in all its frothy grandeur
during the monsoon from the railway as it
thunders down the whimstone precipice at Khan-
dala to the great ravine of the Oolas, where it
buries itself, as may be said, in sundry places—
“Where Deucalion hurled his mother's entrails on
the desert world.”
Where we made the passage all was quiet in
the moonlight, with nothing but the sound of
rippling water, so delightful to the sun-burnt soul
in Hindoostan. The stream was wooded to the
water-edge with scrub and brush. A bard in
another land has pourtrayed something similar,
and, like everything he touched in nature, with a
master-hand, Minus the hazel, it will do very
well for this :—
“Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays
As through the glen it winnpl’t,
Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays,
Whyles in a weil it dimpl’t,
Whyles glitter'd to the nightly rays
Wi bickering, dancing dazzle,
Whyles cookit underneath the braes
Below the spreading hazel. e
Unseen that night.”
The great difference between the Deccan and
Konkan streams is in their clearness. Abana
and Pharpar are nothing to them. On the road
SEEvAJEE’s FORTs—RAJMACHEE. 397
to Beejapur there are no streams so clear, from
the Beema itself down to the smallest rivulet.
We except those in the Island of Arran, where
the streams, rushing down from the granite clefts
in Goatfell, become transformed in the plain to
apocalyptic visions, clear rivers of the water of
life, pure as crystal. This is the great want in
our Konkan scenery. Clear sand and water-worn
pebbles, in lieu of the leprous margin of the
Bassein and Callian creeks, these lovely scenes
by moonlight, or the chiaro-scuro of early dawn,
would transform them into the beauties of Como
or Loch Lomond. The romance is sadly dispelled
when one jumps ashore ankle-deep in mud.
398
THE FORT OF RAIGHUR.
Adieu thou palace, rarely entered,
Adieu ye mansions, where I’ve ventured,
Adieu ye cursed streets of stairs
How Surely he who mounts them swears.
Byrom's Adieu.
RAIGHUR HO !
Raighur is a lonely hill. No one cares to go to
it, for it is rather out of the way and difficult of
access. One English lady has ascended it, and
Gell, of pedestrian fame, in his seven-leagued
boots. From Bombay the journey is
Splash, Splash, across the Sea,
Tramp, tramp, across the main.
The splashing ends at Nagotna, where we ex-
change the howling of the bunder-boat men for
the tender mercies of the messman. A much-
abused man in India is the messman, and yet we
could not get on well without him. Let us, there-
fore, talk of him lovingly as we swoop down
upon him at the unearthly hour of 4 a.m. He
rises uncomplainingly—it is true with something
sEEVAJEE’s FORTS-RAIGHUR. 399
like a grunt—but I am sure, if I were a messman
I should be inclined to say “Get out !” But he
is the afflicted man’s companion, he strokes him
with the hair, and sends him gently away in his
tonga at peace with all the world. Forgive him,
then, if he sings a shrill requiem to himself on our
departure. “A fair wind to him. May he never
come back again.” The morning is cold. There
is much fog as we emerge from this creek town,
so the driver blows his horn lustily with a “clear
the road” twang, which rouses drowsy men and
beasts of burden, for we can hear and partially see
them, in the gray daylight, hustling and scuffling
out of the way. It was there I saw what would
have sent away that great wood engraver, Thomas
Bewick, crazy with delight, a dead horse, and
which, I am not sure, figures in one of his tail
pieces. The horse lay with extended legs, thrown
out from it, in its last kick, in the attitude in
which death had overtaken it, a picture of weary
abandon and utter thowlesness, so difficult for the
painter to delineate. There, too, was the dog on
its haunches, with closed jaws, riving with might
and main at the undismembered carcass. Our
driver seems up to his work. At all events we
have no need to imitate Archbishop Sharpe on
Magus Moor and shout to the postilion, “Drive,
400 BOOK OT BOMBAY,
drive, drive,” for the people are inoffensive, and
the temper of Deccany man and beast seem to fit
each other to a T, and they go at their work as if
they meant it. We bowl along, up hill and down
dale, sending stones and dirt spinning right and
left, taxing wheels and thews to the utmost, until
we feel that we are within an inch of our lives,
specially so in those long sweeps, as it were in
a chariot of doom, thundering down hill to the
foot of a nullah, full of boulders and projecting
stones, on which we bump, thump, and crash—
happily not to our destruction.
VIEW OF NAGOTNA CREEK FROM BOMBAY.
We are now on consecrated ground—conse-
crated we mean to us by many a bright vision
from Malabar and Cumballa Hills, for in the early
days of the monsoon we have wonderful pro-
spects from Bombay. It is then that distance
lends enchantment to the view. Sometimes the
curtain lifts, and the clouds clear away from the
island of Caranjah, the high land of Thull, and
the broad lagoon which intersects them. There
across the harbour lies in all its glory a new
heaven and a new earth—a place of broad streams
and rivers, fretted with the gold and islands of
the blest—a vision to satisfy the weary soul at
SEEVAJEE’s ForTs—RAIGHUR. 401
sunrise, vexed with the miseries of a restless
night. One solitary palm tree stands on the
extreme verge of the horizon, like a lonely sen-
tinel on the confines of the world beyond. What
that world is we now know. No longer mere
glamour or chiaroscuro, blotted out of being by the
first rays of the rising sun, but a beautiful
country well-cultivated, though prosaic, well-
watered and well-wooded, filled with a pros-
perous people whose gaums and farm stead-
ings dot the landscape. Tiffin and a might’s
lodging at Dasgaum, in travellers’ bungalow,
whence a short morning’s drive alongside the
creek takes us to Mhar. The estuary is nar-
row, but seen in its windings and in the long
shadows of early daylight, offers some tempting
bits of scenery to the artist, water being always
a pleasing and grateful adjunct to Indian
scenery. The tuft of bulrush, and heron on one
leg was not awanting. Burns in “The wicked
town of Ayr ‘’ hits off Mhar, -
“Low in a sandy valley spread
An ancient burgh rears its head.
“When I was at Goa I saw in a principal
market place an engine with steppings to go
upon, called a strapado, which unhinges a man’s
51
402 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
joints.” Exactly. This is the engine to
which you are transferred at Mhar yelept a
bullock gharry. The distance to be done is ten
miles, and we do it in seven hours, and can assure
the reader that had we been the stiffest-necked
heretic that ever existed we could not have been
more severely punished. It is not only a knock-
kneed existence, but the head comes in for a fair
share of beetling. You are cuffed on one side,
and then, by way of average adjustment, on the
other, until you are black and blue, and the only
rest you get is when the brutes shamble into
some nullah full of water and boulders, leaving
you like Lord Ullin's daughter in the midst
thereof. There is great virtue, however, in an
Indian tiffin under a tree. An addition of “ a
stanmin drink like the coo o' Forfar,” and a
rough walk of two miles take us to Pachad.
PACHAD AND THE STAIRCASE.
At Pachad we spent a very quiet night in the
temple of Ramswamy. An owl hooted; and a
youngjackal threaded its way among the recumb-
ent bodies. There were once 10,000 horsemen
stationed here, yet we did not hear the sound of
bit or bridle.
* Dr. Fryer, 1674.
SEEVAJEE’s ForTs—RAIGHUR. 403
Pachad is the ancient peth of the fort. Some-
what like the grange attached to barons’ keep and
castle, the peth was the depôt of supplies
brought in from the surrounding country for the
use of the garrison : a strong place to keep watch
and ward, and summon all visitors, friendly or
otherwise, to parley. The ordeal by touch at
Pachad sent a tremor right up to the bastions of
Raighur. An early start is the best, so we
breast the hill at 3 a.m. This enables us to see
the sun rise when we arrive at our destination ;
but I am not sure but that all the Deccan hills
are best to be done in this way. A lamp to your
feet and a light to your path is all you want. The
precipices and gulfs profound are better in
shadow, otherwise the pedestrian, whose nerves
are weak or physical education neglected, may
be the subject of groggy and uneasy sensations,
so the fine scenery and elixir of the cragsman may
become man traps to catch or murder-holes to
engulph the unwary. I must say, however, that
Raighur is a noble hill, and does not resort to
mean shifts. Besides, in the afternoon, the
western sun blazes fierce on the exposed path-
way all the way up.
When Seevajee built Raighur he counted the
cost, and it took him years to accomplish. He ran
404, 13OOK OF BOMBATſ.
a stair up the side of Raighur. In the level places
it was not wanted, but deflections, up or down,
were covered by it as it sidled or zigzaged up
the hill. The transverse blocks were laid down
or cut out of the living rock, and a through
gate cleared away in the rock where needed by
gunpowder. The horse, the camel, may even the
elephant, were no strangers to the stair of
Raighur. Near the summit, the staircase is near-
ly perfect, and the topmost tiers as entire as the
day they were cut. But time and the elemental
strife of two hundred years, to which must be
added General Prother's gunpowder in 1818,
have done their work upon it.
The monsoon deals death to masoncraft on the
hillside, and, like the preacher, writes “Vanity of
vanities” on the strongest works of man. Every
inch in its downward progress a monsoon torrent
increases in strength, volume, and fury, until to-
day we see the path of the destroyer marked by
avalanches of débris and loose stones, spread out
like a fan to the plaim below, where all trace of
the staircase is lost. Any person in good health
may ascend Raighur. There is, of course, a good
deal of climbing as well as walking, and breaking
of shins in Matheran-cooly-path-work. The
foothold of a heavy man sometimes gives way,
sEEVAJEE’s ForTs—RAIGHUR. 405
but a lighter one will scramble up the hill in half
the time we have done.
POSITION.
Raighur is not Rajghur, which is seen from the
door of St. Mary’s Church, Poona. They both,
however, mean Royal Palace.” Raighur is in
lat. 18:12 N., long. 73.38 E. Draw a straightline
on the map from Junjeera due east, and it will
bisect Raighur twenty miles from the coast. It
has been called the Gibraltar of the East,i and
of all the hill forts in the Bombay Presidency it
is the most interesting. It was built and fortified
by Seevajee and became his abode. In other parts
he was merely a wayfaring man for the might, but
here for sixteen years he gathered around him
wives and children, Brahmin statesmen such as
they were, gods and their gooroos, goods and
chattels, the mighty plunder he levied from cities,
kaphilas, and caravels. Whatever wild raids he
was engaged in, they all had one matural termina-
tion which was when he sat down on this
* Torna and Rajghur are in the Punt of Bhore's territory.
Raighur is British in the Rolaba Collectorate.
t Not the Gibraltar of Mathew Arnold, in those beautiful lines
composed in memory of his brother, who died there on his way
from India :—
The murmur of this midland deep
Is heard to-night around thy grave,
There, where Gibraltar's cannon'd steep
O'er frowns the Wave.
April, 9, 1859.
406 Book of BoMBAY.
mountain top and counted up his gains; and his
endless acquisition of plunder, which was his meat
and drink, never knew respite except when its
massive gates were closed upon him. If ever he
slept soundly, it was in Raighur. Here he was
crowned, and through its two-leaved gates, borne
upon a litter, came from his bloody raid at
Jalna, this restless Scion of humanity, for the
last time, with his battered body, to lay him down
and die. Raighur rises from the Konkan, and
not from the Deccan, and in this respect and in
height resembles Matheran or Prubhul. Its area
is about a mile-and-a-half long by one mile broad,
tapering away,+a wedge like Gharbut Point,
Matheran. In superficies shape and levels the
entire hill resembles an isolated Gharbut, but
though there are trees upon it, it has not the
dense wood of Matheran.
DESCRIPTIVE.
There are three gates to Raighur. The first is
300 or 400 feet from the summit, flanked by bas-
tions 30 feet high, from which the ramparts
diverge on either side. The decay of Mahratta
power is written on their fort gates. Raighur
stands wide open day and night, you can pick
the lock of Torna with a penknife (but don’t do
sEEvAJEE’s FORTS-RAIGHUR. 407
it), and a Birmingham padlock marked “ patent "
dangles idly in the wind on the door posts of Pur-
tabghur. Another gate is passed, and we stumble
on the brow of Raighur. Two polygonal towers
stand here, vaulted, bomb-proof, and with pointed
windows, but without mullions. Architecture,
partly Hindoo, partly Muslim. They are two-
storied and 30 feet high. Externally much orna-
mented with projecting masses of masonry stand-
ing at right angles from the wall. Pleasure
houses or watch towers we know not. On this
limited plateau is the largest tank on the hill,
and a goodly number of trees, among which some
buffaloes are wandering promiscuously.
We now enter the Balla Killa. The entrance
is by a gateway and staircase, on either side
of which rise high walls, well built and in
perfect condition, and which may have been
covered or arched over. We are now within
the inner cincture, where everything was kept
that was worth keeping. Kingly crown, holy
books, with the gold and women of the
sovereign. We will speak of the last first.
There are seven jagheers ; each wife had her own
quarter. They are walled enclosures as large
as a Scotch kirkyard, and as gloomy with a sug-
gestive precipice beyond. Historically the No. 7
4.08 - Book OF BOMBAY.
is an error, for Seevajee had only four wives.
Some architectural forethought, no doubt, con-
tingent upon his connubial dotage, “We are
seven.” Then come a congeries of buildings,
the walls of which only are now standing,
residences of nawabs and gentry of sorts.
ARCHITECTURE.
- The buildings (such as they are) are the best of
all Seevajee's handiwork, for he was a bad mason.
He had too much on hand to busy himself en-
tirely with stones and mortar. When we compare
even this, which is Seevajee's best, with Eesaghur
and Singhur forts, which were built before he
existed, the difference is apparent. As for Torna
and Purtabghur, forts constructed by Seevajee,
they are slipshod work. The grass grows green
or brown between every single stone, while
you can barely put a penknife blade between
the stones of Eesaghur, where the length of
the walls (a thousand yards or more), and the
magnitude of the bastions surprise as much
even an unpractised eye as do their finish and
execution. There is a strong Saracenic element
in the earlier fort architecture of the Deccan.
Take the Rajghur and Torna arches for ex-
ample. The gateways remind one of Cairo or
sEEvAJEE's FoETS-RAIGHUR. 409
Damascus, and carry us back to those dim and
early times when the Arabs first carried their
conquests and civilisation into Western India.
The Hindoo modified what the Arab began,
but the disciple in the Deccan was not worthy
of his master.
It may assist us, in filling in the picture, to
remember that in Seevajee’s time there were 300
stone-houses here, accommodation for a garrison
of 2,000 men, offices for the administration and
disbursement of his revenue, and for the custody
of the archives of the kingdom, a mint which
coined not only copper coins but golden pagodas,
a bazaar also consisting of a street nearly a mile
long, the sides of which you can still see plinth
high, and a signboard to describe each quarter,
standing at corners like a huge inverted slate,
six feet high and two broad. Raighur contains
one building which we take to be Seevajee’s, and
which out-distances in architectural beauty and
workmanship anything we have seen in the forts
of the Deccan. It is a stone arch which, no
doubt, constituted the great gateway or entrance
to his palace, court, or durbar, apparently a
copy of the one at Beejapoor. Comparing Raighur
to Gharbut, the arch would be the hotel, and
Seevajee's tomb and temple at Gharbut Point.
52
410 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
It is larger than the arch of Titus at
Rome, without posterns, very like it, and is the
entrance to a court as big as Solomon’s temple.*
The arch, of regal magnificence, is seen from
afar, and must have been a fine picture when
the black eagle of Jooner flapped his mighty
wings over Deccan and Konkan plain, which
he had learned to strip so bare. It has an inside
staircase, a most workman-like structure, almost
as perfect as the day it was constructed, save
that stalactites, finger length, hang from the
roof, showing that two hundred monsoons have
forced some moisture into hidden crannies.f
We creep up in the dark to have
A VIEW FROM RAIGHUR. -
The sun is just rising behind Torna. There
is nothing but hills to be seen north, south,
east, and west. At our feet is Mhar, where
Seevajee spent so many of his youthful days.
Here is Singhur, and there Mahableshwur,
* Solomon's Temple, 120 feet long, 35 broad.—Speaker's Com-
mºtº the tape and measuring line Of the architect comes
to Raighur, we leave on record the foot or “rule o’ thumb,”
measurements :-
Height of arch...................... 60 feet.
Span . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * * * g º ºs e º 'º & & © a e e - » "
Sides of arch.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . 12 ,, broad.
Length of passage through ........ 24 ,
Length of Court ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 ,,
Breadth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
It was an open court, and there was a well in the middle of it,
row filled up with stones and rubbish.
SEEVAJEE’s FORTs—RAIGHUR. 4ll
and to the south-east the fort of Kangoree,
where two Englishmen were imprisoned by
the last Peshwa with much cruelty. When
we bombarded Wassota (to which they had
been removed) sixty years ago, Cornets Hunter
and Morrison crept out with grizzly beards and
unbleached calico, not much the worse of their
durance vile. The best view of Raighur is from
a place that not one man in a million will ever
go to see—we mean the summit of Torna. It is
there that its massive bulk and steep walls of
rock heave their everlasting proportions on the
eye. As you cross the Nagotna plain, Raighur
has little appearance, and the nearer we get to
it, the less we see of it, until we arrive at the
top, when its external appearance is lost to us.
We tried in vain to make it out from the Maha-
bleshwur points, and caught merely a make-
believe shadow of it from the coup d’oeil at
Warra” on the Par Ghaut, and from Purtabghur.
Seevajee had a quick ear, and heard further
than we can see. One night when he was fast
asleep in Raighur he suddenly awoke and said
some misfortune had befallen Danda Rajpuree
near Junjeera. It was too true. It was the
* Warra.-The travellers' bungalow, here is a Gothic building
like a Swiss chalèt among the mountains. We can recommend a
short sojourn in this delightful Spot.
412 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
bursting of a powder magazine which he heard,
and his fort was taken. Rajpuree was twenty
miles off. -
WHY SEEVAJEE CHOSE RAIGHUR.
Raighur was neither gifted to him nor heired
by him like the jagheers of Poona and Soopa, but
came to him by right of conquest. The time was
probably about 1662 to 1664, whenSeevajee looking
around him for a nest, and taking the measure of
events and his own position among them, his eye
was arrested by this great quadrangular block.
He was then occupying Rajghur, a strong fort
4,000 feet above sea-level, four miles from Torna,
and about thirty-five miles south-west of Poona.
Rajghur and Torna are both hills of a breakncek
character and well suited for the abode of the
youthful chief of a turbulent and unsettled coun-
try. But he was now looking for something else.
Circumstances were driving him, or he was driving
circumstances, to a position, where a broader
platform would be necessary upon which to
exploit. His success was now in a manner
assured. He had many forts; in fact, he left 150
fortified places when he died, and among them
were some built before his day and in splendid
condition to choose from. But Rairee, as it was
SEEvAJEE’s ForTs—RAIGHUR. 413
then called, offered him such advantages, that
though its works, out and in, were perhaps the
feeblest of them all, and its area unbuilt upon, he
resolved to fortify it, and construct upon it a
palace and buildings suitable for his government.
His reasons for doing so we will endeavour to pre-
sent to the reader. At first sight Raighur seems an
out-of-the-way place—a lonely hill—but, it must
be borne in mind, that Bombay with its popula-
tion of 60,000 had not then the preponderating
weight in the common-wealth it has since obtain-
ed. A glance at the map shows that Raighur is
nearly equi-distant from Bombay, Poona, and
Satara. Moreover, it was only a few miles from
Mhar, a shallow seaport, it is true, but a base of
operations whence supplies were always available,
and in communication with the chain of droogs or
sea forts which he had established along the
coast, and to which, should the worst come to
the worst—and this was no doubt among his
calculations—he could resort. It must be borne
in mind that the empire of India was then
ruled from Delhi, and that Aurungzebe in per-
son was hurling masses of men into the Deccan
to crush the nascent energies of the Mahrattas,
of whom Seevajee was the representative. The
first great wave had already broken, and Dow-
414 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
latabad, Jooner, Chakun, Poona, and Soopa had
already fallen a prey to the Moslem. Singhur
and Poorundhur might come next (as they did),
and the deluge would be upon him. So he stepped
back, not reluctantly or cowardly, but as a matter
of stratagem. Looking from Raighur to the north-
east, in the direction of Pooma, the sky line is
bounded by a huge breastwork of nature’s mak-
ing, thirty miles away, scarps 4,000 feet above
sea-level, crowned by the bastions of Rajghur and
Torna; as long as they remained intact he was
safe. They were his natural defence, his muni-
tion of rocks, between him and the Moghul
enemy, and they did remain so during his life,
for, so far as we know, they were never surrender-
ed to force or by treaty or stratagem. They
were to stand and fall together. Such are some
of the political and military reasons which may
have induced Seevajee to pitch upon the rock of
Rairee. As far as we know it was unstained
by human blood. The same could not be said of ..
Singhur, Poorundhur, Loghur and, least of all,
of Purtabghur, under whose flagstones lay the
gory head of Afzulkhan. Here, at all events,
he could stand on his own threshold and worship
the tulsi plant without being confronted with the
evidence of his guilt or the witnesses of his
SEEvAJEE’s FORTS-RAIGHUR. 415
crimes.* Reasons also of a physical and topo-
graphical character. Raighur is a great wedge-
shaped block, split off from the Western Ghauts,
inaccessible on three sides, and wanting only
fortifications on the fourth, where a gate flanked
by towers and ramparts made it impregnable to
his enemies, while it was of easy access to his
friends. The avenues leading to it were most
difficult of access, and the country round about,
being a theatre of mountains, has been described
by a contemporary of Seevajee, who travelled over
it “as a specimen of hell,” which, d, la Dante or
Milton, represents the long and toilsome march
of a thirsty traveller among cactus bushes, thorns
of sorts, and dry water-courses, until the Moslem
saw the precipices beetling above his head, which
encircled the home of this troublesome idolator.
*-* “Black he stood as night
Fierce as ten furies—terrible as hell.”
THE ENGLISH EMBASSY.
During the reign of Charles the Second, when
Gerald Aungier was Governor of Bombay, an
Embassy was sent to Raighur to assist at the
* All this was changed by Sambhajee, the son and successor of
Seevajee...The moment he passed the gate of Raighur, says Grant
Duff, he displayed the barbarity of his disposition by putting his
step-mother, the wife of Seevajee, to a cruel and lingering death,
imprisoning her son and Seevajee's prime minister, confiscating
his property, beheading or hurling from the precipices of the rock
of Raighur the Mahratta officers who were attached to her cause.
416 Book OF BOMBAY.
coronation of Seevajee. It consisted of Henry
Oxenden and two English factors. Henry Oxen-
den was of good family; his father was a Knight
of England. The tombs of his two brothers, Sir
George and Christopher, are still shown at Surat,
the former forty feet high. Bombay sent the
best man she had, next to the Governor. He had
been chief of Carwar, which place had been taken
by Seevajee, and presumably knew a good deal of
the politics of those countries on the western
coast of India. He became Deputy Governor of
Bombay in 1676. The baronetcy was created in
his person in 1679. He died shortly after. He
was about fifty-six years of age when he ascended
Raighur. The party went in a balloon (not ačrial
navigation, but) a small sail boat to Chaul, and
arrived at Pachad six days after leaving Bombay.
NIL DESPERANDUM.
Throughout the early history of Bombay there
is nothing so striking or worthy of admiration as
the attitude of conscious strength displayed by
the men who upheld the government of the infant
colony. One would say that the Great Powers at
that time could easily have crushed Bombay, and
that they did not do it because they could not do
it, in justice to their own selfish interests. At
sEEvAJEE’s roRrs—RAIGHUR. 417
all events Bombay did not blanch or fear either
within or without her bastions. The men who
constituted the Embassy went on this expedition
as on a holiday excursion, or a tour in the
districts to collect the cocoanut revenue of
Matoonga or Sion. They had heard stories of
Seevajee's treachery, cruelty, and lustful ambi-
tion—stories too well founded. One of Seevajee's
forts he called Singhur, the lion’s den. It
still frowns in lofty grandeur over the valley
of the Neera and the Lake of Kurukwasla.
But in truth they were all lion's dens, with the
footmarks inward. Was not the deed of Afzul-
khan still ringing in their ears ? So, to many a
Bombay household, Seevajee was a Black Douglas,
an old Man of the Mountain, or Giant Despair,
and the caves of Raighur, the hole in the hill, from
the door of which Mercy came trembling away.
And yet not one word betraying doubt, hesita-
tion, or fear exists in their narrative. Gerald
Aungier had blotted these words out of the dic-
tionary.
Bombay was not at war with Seevajee. Never-
theless, it redounds greatly to the credit of both
parties. Seevajee was not afraid to have the Em-
bassy in his fort, and they were not frightened to
go into it and remain there. The Raighur of the
53 -
418 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
seventeenth century was not the Kabul of the
nineteenth century.
THE BURST OF THE MONSOON.
Let us try and picture this gray-haired and
grizzly Puritan on the heights of Raighur. It
need not be a difficult task, for we have only to ask
ourselves what are now the precursors of the mon-
soon on any hill in Western India to know what
they were then and there. The atmosphere weighs
down everything, man, beast, and bird:—
“There’s not a bird with lonely nest,
In pathless wood or mountain crest,”
but drops the eye or folds the wing, and the
very foliage seems to hang limp and lifeless amid
the oppressive and universal stillness. As day
succeeds day his troubles accumulate.
I doubt not that Henry Oxenden prayed long
and fervently (when the insects would let him),
for rain, and for wind too: not “the soughin
winnin wind,” but “the rantin tearin wind * of
the Scotch Minister, one blast to shake his house
and the very bed he lay on. For long ere this,
you may be sure, had come hunger and thirst
for the unattainable, the feverish pulse, throb-
bing temples and bloodshot eyes, for which there
was now little left to look at, but a weird and
sEEvAJEE’s for Ts—RAIGHUR. 419
lurid landscape of sand-devils, chasing each other
on the plains below him, or, peradventure, the
mirage of his own spectre on the neighbouring
hill, to mock or confound him with the delu-
sions of witchcraft.* That he cursed the day
he left Bombay Castle or his native Kent is not
recorded ; but recorded or not, with or without
evidence, we take it for granted that Henry
Oxenden, in consonance with Saxon human
nature in Hindoostan, threw his wasted body on
a charpoy, and muttered in accents, not loud but
deep:—“ It is a weariness of the flesh, when will
it be over !” “I have seen your nautches, your
prize climbing of precipices, your cock-fighting,
kite-flying, hawking, archery, spear and tulwar
exercise, performing goats and monkeys, what
are they to me? What boots it that Seevajee
weighs himself against gold, feeds daily a crowd
of hungry Brahmins, or flashes his sword of
Bowanee in the morning sun? The Mountain Rat!f
His mother dies. Who cares? Or whether he
marries a fourth or a fortieth wife 2 Am I to die
and have the earth of Raighur shovelled on me,
that the Honourable Company trading in the East
, *. We ourselves have never seen the spectre of the Brocken
in the Deccan, but this display of the mirage is vouched for by
Dr. J. Y. Smith in the last edition of his book On Matheran.
f The name which Aurungzebe gave him.
420 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Indies may live, or be spared, merely to exist on
goat’s flesh” while, for sooth, the fat factors of
Bombay fare sumptuously every day on prawn and
pomphlet or royster over night on their Bombay
Punch li. Give me the hurricane rather than the
pestilence, for I would rather see the rack of the
monsoon on Raighur than the coromation of ten
Seevajees. Woe! worth the hour ! Woe I worth
the day ! He rises, gropes his way to the nearest
loophole in his dormitory His face is dashed with
a whirlwind of dust and leaves swept up the naked
surface of the ramparts; half-blinded he peers
into the darkness of the night, when lo! a flash
from heaven pours a blaze of light over half the
kingdom of Seevajee, and reveals the blackened
sides of Torna, seamed and ribbed with the white
*
* A Muslim butcher at the foot of the hill supplied them
with half a goat every day. At the end of weeks he began to be
surprised and desirous of Seeing the Bellativallahs who had
consumed as much as Seeyajee's bordes had done in as many years,
so he tottered up the hill to have & look at his customers. He
had not seen so many animals slaughtered since he had been at
Mecca. As for Oxenden and his companion they had nothing else
to eat for three mortal months, neither fish, flesh nor fowl, nor
good red herring—
Goat young, Goat old,
Goat hot, Goat cold,
Goat lean, Goat tough,
Thank God we’ve had enough.
+ Punch, and toddy are both inventions of Western India.
Pºwnch, five—the five ingredients being lime-juice, rosewater.
sugar, arrack, and Water. e -
Tom Coryat, writing in India before 1617, says he is drinking
his friend's health in Tadi. Scotsmen have taken kindly to the
word. The Bombay Presidency has much to answer for, if we
are prepared to accept this Statement, that it has given birth to
tle names of the national drink both of England and Scotland.
sEEvAJEE’s ForTs—RAIGHUR. 42}
cataracts of the monsoon. Blessed relief: never-
to-be-forgotten vision. Thou turnest my mourn-
ing into joy, and my heaviness into laughter.
“Oh when in kindness unto me wilt thou be pleased to
QOIſle
I with a perfect heart will walk within my house at
home.” &
So with this verse of David’s Psalm, done into
metre by Francis Rous, we leave him. He will
mow sleep without rocking.
The day dawns. The thunder has cleared the
air. After a wild and tempestuous night of splash-
ing rain, the misty curtain slowly rises from a
panorama of endless hills; rift and corrie, peak
and precipice, in sharp relief. A glint of sunshine
anon flashes into being, here and there a knoll or
slope covered by the magic of a night's rain with
a mantle of transparent green. Raighur is decked
with the same delicate hue, a carpet or rather a
gauzy robe, thin as Dacca muslin. -
Tanks are filling, frogs croaking, and land crabs
scuttling out of their hybernation and myriads of
insect life abroad. Wild thyme scents the morning
air. The cobra-lily peeps out in the dells, the
orchid blossoms apple-like on a leafless trunk, and
the wild plantain with its spiked sheath of green
and glistering leaves bursts its filaments amid
422 }OOK OF BOMBAY.
earth and stones, overlapping the sere and rustling
fragments of last season’s vegetation. Amid
these heralds of a new era a Jemadhar announces
Seevajee's coronation. But we give the account
in the Embassy’s own words, capitals and all.
THE CORONATION.
“ Accordingly next morning he and his retinue
went to Court and found the Rajah seated on a
Magnificent Throne, and all his Nobles waiting
upon him in Rich Attire ; his son Sambhajee
Rajah, Peshwa Morah Pundit, and a Brahman of
great Eminence, seated on an Ascent under the
Throne, the rest, as well Officers of the Army as
others, standing with great respect. The English
made their Obeisance at a distance, and Narun
Sinai held up the Diamond Ring that was to be
presented him. He presently took notice of it,
and ordered their coming nearer, even to the Foot
of the Throne, where being Wested, they were de-
sired to retire, which they did not so soon, but
they took notice on each side of the Throne. There
being (according to the Moor’s manner) on heads
of gilded Lances many Emblems of Dominion and
Government, as on the Right hand were two great
Fish's Heads of Gold, with very large Teeth, on
the Left several Horse's Tails, a pair of Gold
Scales on a very high Lance’s head, equally poised,
an Emblem of Justice ; and as they returned at
S,
seev AJEE’s ForTs—RA1GHUR. 423
the Palace Gate, stood two small Elephants on
each side and two fair Horses, with Gold Trap-
pings, Bridles and Rich Furniture, which made
them admire how they brought them up the Hill,
the Passage being both difficult and hazardous.”
It was the 6th of June 1674. The distance
from their house to the palace was about a mile.
The equestrian sentry at the gate was doubtless
the typical Mahratta horseman in his shirt of
mail or case of iron network, his helmet covering
the ears and falling on the shoulders. The man
who crowned him was Gaga Butt, a Brahmin
Shastree from Benares.
Seevajee's titles were Kshittrya Koolavotumsa,
Sree Raja Seeva, the head ornament of the
Kshittree race, his Majesty, lord of the Royal
umbrella. In other words, as loud as trumpet
conch or tomtom could proclaim, Great is
Seevajee, King of the Mahrattas, greater than the
gold against which he was weighed or the dia-
monds that saved his life at Delhi.
Seevajee’s standard Bhugwa-Jhenda was swal-
low-tailed and of a deep Orange colour, but on a
big day like this the Juree-Putka, or golden
streamer, the national ensign of the Mahrattas,
* Dr. Fryer.
424 BOOK OF BOM BAY.
no doubt waved from the great arch which still
crowns the highest plateau of Raighur.
PORTRAIT.
The man who was the subject of this ovation
was forty-seven years of age and of a handsome
and intelligent countenance. No portrait of
him has come down to us except the one in
Orme's History, evidently from an oval on glass
by some Delhi painter, and most probably picked
up by Orme or his father in their wanderings
along the coast of Western India in the early
part of the eighteenth century. Their proximity
to Seevajee’s own time is a partial guarantee of its
faithfulness. At all events it is the only portrait
that we shall likely ever have. A keen eye, a
long aquiline and somewhat drooping nose, a
neat trim cut beard and small moustache make
up for us a face, stolid, feline, and fair for a
Mahratta—somewhat melancholy but a wonder-
ful face, in which knowing even less than we
now know, we could descry ability and cun-
ning, and the hardihood and daring of a con-
spirator against the rights of man—one not
easily cowed or alarmed, with a strong faith in
himself, and a gift to measure his own capacities,
and those of the men who were to be his helpers
in his career of aggrandisement. Well worth
snßVAJEE’s FORTs—RAIGHUR. 4.25
looking at this man among men ; sash across his
breast, himself a Star of India, baleful enough,
kingly cowl with its tassel of pearls and feathers.
No need of a tiara of the diamonds of Golconda
for this man, for his eagle eye (on which all contem-
poraries are as much agreed as on the eye of Burns)
outshines them all, and by the skinny fingers he
beckons to the English Embassy, he proclaims
himself the undisputed ruler of dusky millions.
HOW THEY SPEND THE TIME.
There was the legitimate Hindoo drama in
which Gumputti displayed his histrionic powers,
amid battles of the gods, and much sound, fury,
and blazing explosions as of a thousand devils.
National peculiarities were hit off by the stage
player to the life: the Arab mercenary black in
the face and bristling with arms ; the Moslem
hajee with ochry beard redolent of musk and
Mecca ; the Portuguese sailor, gallena del Mare
(hens of the sea) ; the Parsee with hat so big
that it toppled over amid roars of laughter ; the
Sindi, abw tassa or the father of the frying pan;
the hatted man par eveellence, one of ourselves
with veritable swagger, flourishing his came with
much nonchalance and calling for drink as if his
stomach was an unslaked lime-kiln, and his sun
54
426 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
topee dinted and as greasy and ancient as if it had
been worn by Tom Coryat, whereat the English
laughed much. There were kuthas. Seevajee
was great at kuthas ; a mixture of recitation,
song and anecdote, with a little acting as byeplay,
like Mr. Mathew’s or David Kennedy’s entertain-
ments of a later date. There was music. Seevajee
was passionately fond of it. He was in Delhi
about the time that the Emperor denounced
music, and may have originated or assisted in the
tremendous piece of waggery it called forth.
“Public proclamation was made prohibitingsing-
ing and dancing. It is said that one day a crowd
of singers and dancers were gathered together
with great cries, and having fitted up a bier with a
good deal of display, round which were grouped the
public wailers, they passed under the Emperor’s
haroksha-i-darsan, or interview window, when he
enquired what was intended by the bier and the
show. The minstrels said that music was dead,
and they were carrying his corpse to the burial.”
Seevajee knew the Ramayana and was perpe-
tually singing snatches of it. It would have been
a shame to him if he had not, as Walmiki, the In-
dian Homer—so says the legend—was born at
his very doors. You can see his birth-place
* Kafi Khan.
SEEWAJEE’s ForTS-RAIGHUR. 427
near Jejooree and the Neera bridge, nestling in
the valley beneath, as you look down from the
battlements of Poorundhur. The Ramayana con-
tains 20,000 verses. There is no need to trans-
late the whole of it ; but the following, done to
our hand into English by Dr. Wilson, if ever
sung by Seevajee, must have been squeaked out
by him in a very low key:—
“Truth is the foundation of piety,
In the world the root of religion is truth ;
Truth is the supreme principle in the world ;
Truth is the most excellent of all things ;
Therefore let truth be glorious.”
Above all there was the newsman. Henry Oxen-
den stands convicted of having bribed the press.
But, indeed, everybody was bribed, from the
sweeper up to the prime minister, nay, even the
Maharajah himself. In diamonds and shawls
they must have paid the expenses of the Embassy
twice over. They were told not to come empty-
handed, and paying for early news was surely the
most venial of sins, for if you wish news even
when the truth is economised you must pay
for it. The name of this supple courtier and
public intelligencer was Peta Gi Pundit Vocano-
voce. Vak means word or sentence, sentence-
maker ; but we must leave this bone for the
philologers to pick. The Embassy at once re-
428 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
cognised his genius and utility by a bonus, a
diamond worth Rs. 125, which meant something
more in 1674. News or not news, straw or not
straw, he had to furnish his daily tale. That
this man was a most adroit liar we have the
amplest evidence. He killed Seevajee several times,
and the obituary notice was sure to be followed
by some instance of daring activity. The dead .
man generally came to life a hundred miles off.
So, when he was waylaying Surat, the sibylline
leaves had him in Chaul, or chewing betelnut
at Bassein when he was scrambling like a wild
cat up the scarps of Hurischundraghur. Five
rivers flow from the Mahableshwur range. Four
have been identified : this doubtless is the fifth.
The infant rills of the press of Western India,
garrulous and muddy at the fountain-head, have
been clarified and subdued by two centuries of
criticism, and now pour their lusty waters, east
and west, far as the Bay of Bengal or the Arabian
Sea. It is curious to stumble upon
A TRANSACTION IN PIECE-GOODS
on the top of Raighur. It illustrates Seevajee as
a man of business when brought face to face
with the representatives of the English nation.
We had a little bill to settle with him, and
had dunned him before without success. The
sEEvAJEE’s FORTs—RAIGHUR. 429
amount was pagodas 10,000, or Rs. 45,000, and
it stood at his debit in the Bombay ledger, for
damage and loss sustained from his troops by
our factories at the sack of Hooblee and Rajapoor.
The factors had been taken away also, but we had
no claim on account of them. Poor bodies Now,
it may be laid down as a certainty that, if the sub-
ject of one nation is dealing with the sovereign of
another, the subject will come off second best, and
if that sovereign is a Mahratta, so much the worse.
Henry Oxenden was a guest, and it was no doubt
an inopportune moment to trouble Seevajee in this
way on the eve of his coronation and marriage.
We have evidence that he chafed over it. You
cannot drive a hard bargain with a man when you
are his guest. The ambassador doubtless imagined
that at such a joyful moment he would concede
everything. But in this, good, easy man, he was
mistaken; for though Seevajee had a mint of
money and an unlimited abroo, or credit, there
was nothing he disliked more than to part with
hard cash. Loot in the shape of piece-goods
was different. With these he was well supplied,
whether it was sakluth, the broadcloth of Eng-
land, or the painted calicoes of India, destined
for the beds and curtains of English matrons :
Raighur was full of them.
Now for the facts. The settlement of this
claim is a marvel of ingenuity. Seevajee sold the
430 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Englishman piece-goods—the market value at the
time being pagodas 15,000—at half price. Noble
and generous merchant prince of Raighur !
The goods were deliverable in three years, a
long contract, but never mind; time was of little
value in the seventeenth century. This would
liquidate pagodas 7,500 and leave a balance of
2,500, which His Highness agreed should be
wiped out, by absolving us from custom duties
on Our resuming business at Rajapur until those
amounted to the equivalent. Most wise ! Most
fair | The historian to whom we are indebted for
these particulars says:—“It is doubtful whether
the English ever received what was settled by
the treaty.” At all events we hear no more of
the treaty of Raighur. It lies on the page of
history, a mere expression of amity between
Seevajee and the English nation, and of course has
no place in Aitchison’s “Treaties and Sunnuds
of India.” A horrible suspicion crosses our
mind. It is unworthy of the dignity of history,
but we shelter ourselves under the Scots’ pro-
verb:—“ It needs a lang spune to sup kail with
the deil.” Did we buy back our own goods 2
SEEVAJEE AND THE ENGLISH.
Whatever miseries were inflicted on the
natives of Western India, and they were not a
few, by Seevajee, the English had no reason to
sEEVAJEE’s ForTS-RAIGHUR. 43I.
complain. He did not injure them. Not one
hair of their head suffered. Even when he was
pillaging Surat he exchanged civilities with
Bombay. I fancy he knew the power and mettle
of the English too well to meddle with them.
Every cowrie he took in the sack of their facto-
ries at Hooblee and Rajapoor, he repaid in his own
way, on the curious principles of Mahratta arith-
metic. He agreed to restore them their wrecks
cast from time to time on his coasts, an inaliena-
ble privilege maintained by native powers from
age to age. Native powers | We asked what we
ourselves had not then the ability to grant in our
own kingdoms of England, Scotland, or France,
the boasted homes of civilisation. He agreed to
take our money at the money’s worth. After
showing poor Mr. Smith in his camp at Surat
two or three heads and hands chopped off,
he was mercifully restored to his friends, clothed
and in his right mind. The two Englishmen
taken from Rajapur and confined in a hill fort by
him were imprisoned on grounds of accusation,
of which there was some reasonable suspicion,
and afterwards released on paying a ransom.
Some small men, such as his Soubadar at
Nagotna, may have bullied a stray English
shikaree on the coasts of Caranjah. His enter-
tainment, however, of the Embassy, such as it
was for three months on Raighur, proves his
432 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
respect for the English. That respect may have
been heightened, may even created, by the
attitude and magnanimous bearing of his great
contemporary, Gerald Aungier. Seevajee may
have scowled, fumed and gnashed his teeth.
Fryer tells us that he cast daily in our faces, that
the very ground we stood on in Bombay had not
been obtained by valour but by compact, and that
we were fitter to live by merchandise than by arms
—carpet soldiers in fact. True, O King, in part
Not by the sword these lands were obtained, but
with the sword they were defended.*
ITS MEMORIES.
Raighur occupies a large space in the history of
Seevajee. Suffice it to say that the wealth of Gol-
conda flowed into it—the plunder of Surat and
twenty other cities besides; that he passed out of
its gates to Delhi, and through its gates did the
fugitive return again. Here on a dark night he
despatched across the jungle 1,000 of his Mawul-
ees on their famous raid and capture of Singhur,
“The den is taken but the lion is slain.”
Here his heart for once failed him, and he reluct-
* We are sorry to impeach the Veracity of Fryer, a most
invaluable writer on this period. The judgment of Mackintosh
comes up against him. e had gone to Callian, to see, some
grand ruins described by Fryer and did not find them, . This is
most unlike the meek Mackintosh. “We all agreed, that Dr.
Fryer whose book induced me to go to Callian ought to have
been hanged.”—Mackintosh's Life.
sº Evaj EE’s FORTs—RAIGHUR. 433
antly resolved to sign the Treaty of Poorundhur,
by which he forfeited twenty forts to the Great
Moghul. It was from this place that he set out at
the head of his memorable expedition to the Car-
natic with 70,000 men, levying chowth as far as
Madras. Here he heard of his father’s death.
Here his mother died. Here he was crowned,
married, died and burned to ashes with a holo-
caust of his wives, elephants, and camels. His
mausoleum is on yonder knoll, its interior a mass
of weeds, trees growing up through the pavement
of its dhºwrumsalla ; its temple foul and dis-
honoured, and its god cast down to the ground.”
No man aow cares for Seewajee. Over all those
wide domains, which once owned him lord and
master, acquired by so much blood and treasure,
and which he handed down with care to the
Rajahs of Kolapoor, the Bhonslas of Satara, and
their Peshwas in Poona, not one man now con-
tributes a rupee to keep or repair the tomb of the
founder of the Mahratta Empire.f
That palace which resounded with acclamation
* The Sacred bull had toppled over and was lying on its back.
SQmething Sinailar elicited a capital bom, mot ſrom Dr. Wilson—
Sic transit gloria. Numdž.
f The British Government conserves the architectural remains
of Tudor and Stewart. Will not the Bombay Government do as
much for the tomb, the temple, and the arch of Seevajee A few
Crumbs that fall from the archaeological bureau of Western India.
would suſtice to keep in repair memorials of a dashing and most
romantic pcriod.
55
434 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
at the installation of Seevajee, king of the Mahrat-
tas, was destined to witness a complete revolu-
tion in their affairs. A strange incident is record-
ed in the ammals of their final overthrow. Their
dominion had lasted one hundred and forty-four
years. It is a long story, but we now approach
the end of it. When the clouds began to gather
round the last days of the Peshwa, his Ramee
was sent to Raighur. It was bombarded by the
English and committed to the flames. On the
10th May, 1818, Colonel Prother ascended the
hill. Somebody, on looking into the ruins of the
palace, observed a native lady crouching amid
the embers of the conflagration—the hunted hare
of the Poet, or Lucia de Lammermoor of Ro-
mance, Woe-begome and mocking at fate.
This was the wife of Bajee Rao, the last of the
Peshwas, and with her Raighur and the Mah-
rattas disappear from the page of History. As in
the last chapter of Ancient History, graven deep on
the coin of Vespasian, it ends with the figure of a
woman sitting low in the dust under a palm tree.
B E E J A POOR.
437
CHAPTER XVII.
BEEJAPOOR.
“I felt, nothing of the usual sentiments inspired by
ruins in contemplating those of Beejapoor. We in general
on such occasions feel a reverential melancholy, and are
lifted above the present time and circumstances. But
these sentiments are produced by ruined cities which
were the scenes of what is venerable or interesting to us.
With these feelings we consider Athens or Rome. But,
here we see the triumph of force, and the buildings of
which we behold the ruins were never the scenes of any
other qualities than those of treachery, debauchery, and
cruelty, of war without science, or generous humanity
without elegance or love.”—Sir James Mackintosh, 1808.
THESE lines were written seventy-four years
ago, and in the main are as true as on the day
they were written, and, like everything by
Mackintosh, are entitled to the deepest con-
sideration. But they may be applied by the
European to every ruined city in Asia, and, we
may add, also to a good many in Europe. We
4.38 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
cannot absolutely say that war was without
science amid such stupendous fortifications as
exists in Beejapoor. It seems as good as any-
thing going at the time in this part of the world.
Elsewhere he says that war was without heroism?
and love without romance, and an answer to
this may be found in Meadows Taylor's novels.
The truth seems to be that public intelligence has
drifted towards the subject of this article during
the nineteenth century in a way that Sir James
Mackintosh, nor any other man in his day, had
little or no conception of. That they had plenty
of science in Beejapoor of a particular kind is
patent enough from the fact that we are only
now beginning to find out how the ancient build-
ers and architects of this city were able to do
things that we could not do ourselves. The big
dome, we are told, is a wonder of constructive
skill; and the roofin the Roza Mausoleum, hang-
ing as it were in the air, was a mystery which
is now only explained by their method of using
concrete. These are Fergusson’s words, and he
says further that nine builders out of ten will tell
you that such a flat roof as that in the Ibrahim
nºfloº, ºft
in his house, was served at his meat by his wife with a brass
ladle. On asking for a reason, she replied, “Lest the sight of
iron should turn your stomach from your victuals, as it had done
y **
from fighting.”—Fºlſer.
HEEJAPOOR. 439
Roza will not stand. It has stood, however, for a
couple of hundred years, and may hold together
for as many more. The era in which the work
was done requires also to be taken into account,
and the place. We must not forget that the
glory of Beejapoor had all passed away before a
single Englishman had set foot in Bombay, and
that Mahmood had placed the gilded crescent on
his sepulchre before half the domes now in
Europe were thought of. The big gun Mailik-el-
Maidan surely was a contribution to the science
of war. Mons. Meg, at Edinburgh Castle, is
nothing to it;” and how it was placed in its
present position is a question that no man yet
has been able satisfactorily to answer.
MEADOWS TAYLOR
Had the best of all opportunities for writing
on the people and history of the Deccan. He had
indomitable perseverance, and he who was once an
apprentice in a grocer’s shop in Bombay in 1824
is now no mean authority on the history of the
Deccan, and his novels are in the hands of all.
He admits himself that he owed much in the way
of legendary lore to William Palmer. It is
Measurements of big gum—diameter at breech, 4 ft, 10 in. ;
diameter at muzzle, 5 ft. 2 in. ; diameter of bore, 2 ft. 43 in. ;
Jength, 14 ft. 3 in. Cast at Ahmednugger, 1518.
440 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
matter of history that William Palmer was allow-
ed to establish a house of business at Hyderabad
in the Deccan in 1814, and came down in the
Calcutta crash of 1829-32.
Sir John Kaye gives the whole story in his
life of Metcalfe, and we gather from his account
that the comercial relations of the Nizam with
this house were so enormous that at one time
the Government of India found it necessary to
pay off the liabilities of the firm to the extent
of a million sterling, and that bullion was sent
to this amount from Calcutta. It did no good
to Palmer and Company, but rather precipitated
the crisis. Our impression is that the existence
of Palmer and Company, with their then rela-
tions to the Nizam, was a standing menace to
the British Government, and the sooner the firm
as then conducted was ended the better.
Meadows Taylor will now tell his own story.
“In 1830 Mr. Palmer’s house continued to be my
chief resort. There was a fascination about
him quite irresistable to me, his knowledge was
so varied, classical, historical, and political. His
father, who had been Secretary to Warren
Hastings, had taken part in almost all the event-
ful scenes of early Anglo-Indian history, and
had married, as was very usual then among
f
BEEJAPOOR., 441
English gentlemen, a lady of high rank, one of
the Princesses of the Royal House of Delhi, and
his fund of knowledge and great store of anecdote
made him a delightful and improving companion.
On the 25th August, 1832, I was married to
Mary Palmer, daughter of William Palmer, Esq.,
at Secunderabad.”
It was in 1839 he became acquainted with
Christopher North (Professor Wilson, the editor
of Blackwood’s Magazine), who urged him to write
his Indian tales. North was no mean judge,
and a life of rambling over every part of the
Deccan for thirty years, and his marriage, fitted
Meadows Taylor to pourtray every department
of Mahratta life, military, social, and domestic,
in each of which he now stands unrivalled.
With -
TEIE ACCOMMODATION
provided for us in Beejapoor we had no need to
grumble. It was the mosque of the Ibrahim Roza
—nothing equal to it, we are told, out of Seville
or Cordova. It was a big bed-room, the curtains
of which were groined arches. You could not
sleep in anything larger except under the canopy
of heaven, which may be tried by anyone who
likes, with perfect impunity, on the Deccan Hills.
56 _.”
4:42 POOK OF BOMBAYe
at this season of the year. Aurungzeb slept
here verging on three-score year and ten—a
heavy weight of clay ! He had just captured
the city and wept over it. O ! thou old hypo-
crite and fratricide He was then worth forty
millions a year: Gamelli Careri says eighty
millions sterling, but let us take the smaller
sum ; and that without either license-tax or
opium to swell his revenue. I wonder if the
people grumbled in those days.
There must have been a soul of goodness about
the man, for he it was who invented dak bunga-
lows, and built them from Kabul to Travancore.
He also took a scummer (Scottice for loathing) at
big tombs, very likely at Beejapoor. Avaunt all
sycophants and mummers |
“Go to your Sculptured tombs, ye great,
In a’ the tinsel trash o' state l’”
Kafi Khan gives us his exact words before his
death —“Carry this creature of the dust quickly
to the first burial-place, and consign him to the
earth without any useless coffin.” So no useless
coffin enclosed his breast, for he laid himself
down, aetat 90, at another Roza, on that steep
hill above Kailas and Ellora, in a plot of ground
a man might have bought for ten rupees, which
you may still see with a tulsi plant and some
BEEJAPOOR. 443
jessamine covering all that remains of the Lord
of the World. He made his tomb, after the
injunction of the Prophet, not more than two feet
high, and open to the dews of heaven.
No man will disturb him; whereas in Beejapoor
rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and
steal.
TOMBS.
What Canopus was to ancient Alexandria that
was Toorwah to Beejapoor, a magnificent suburb
for garden parties and fêtes champeires of sorts.
Though there was no afternoon tea in those days,
they amused themselves with sherbet and other
cooling drinks, among fountains and within the
sound of rippling water. Of a truth the dead
were well remembered in Toorwah, for here, as
in Beejapoor, there seems nothing else than tombs.
We wandered a whole morning until the sun was
high in the heavens ; and there was nothing but
tombs. The tall crop of jowaree grew superin-
cumbent on the ruined sites of the palaces of the
living, but the mausoleums of the dead seemed to
shoot up their bulbous domes everywhere. You
walk in all directions, but the beginning and end
of all is the inevitable. “O vanity of men whose
memorials are as vain as themselves, which in a
444 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
few short years perish, and that which lasts
longest lasts no longer than the world !” Every
man seems to have prepared his own sepulchre
during his life-an old custom. “In the garden
was a new sepulchre wherein was never man yet
laid.” Sometimes the work was cut short. There
is a great mausoleum, half finished, that was to
have surpassed the dome of Mahmood as much
as that dome now surpasses all other buildings.
But when the first stone was raised, its author
and intended occupant, Ibrahim Adil Shah I.,
was cut off by assassination. The workman
threw away his tools, and the cooly his last
basketful of earth into the ditch. And now
there remains something like the ruins of
Melrose Abbey, with this difference, that the rests
on which the arch is built, stone and not wood
as in our modern times, remain inside the arch.
They have never been taken down. The people
here seemed, like the demoniacs of the New Testa-
ment, to have their dwelling among the tombs.
As soon as they arrived at the age of conscious-
ness, they bethought themselves of dying—no,
not exactly of dying, but of what design and
structure should be the habitation of their car-
cases. They had no motion, as we have, of the
narrow house appointed for all living, for
BEEJAPOOR. - 445
Mahmood now sleeps in an acreage, over which
is suspended a dome as big as that of the Pan-
theon.
“Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood *
muttered the words “Six feet will hold him yet.”
It was an idle imprecation. Six feet ! Why,
sixty feet was not enough for the Patel or Mam-
lutdar. If the ghosts of these old Beejapooreans
could only now revisit the glimpses of the moon,
they would be astounded at the condition of
their own sepulchres.
The stronger they were fastened down with
stone and clamp the greater object were they of
cupidity to those who came after them. Size,
strength, durability, and ornamentation, all
increased the desire to see what was in them,
and so Pagan, Frank, and Tartar, full of the idea
of the gold with which the kings and counsellors
of the earth buried themselves, have wrenched
the granite asunder, hammered to pieces the
polished whinstones, and scattered the contents
at the grave's mouth. Out of one arched window,
tomb of Afzulkham, if you will within its mullion-
ed frame, stood peering out, and shaking its ears,
of all things in the world, a live donkey ! A
mongoose hastily scuttled down to the vaults of
446 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
amother charmel house on our approach. At the
door of a third lay some porcupine quills ; and a
fourth, levelled with the earth, bore high, in fruit
and foliage, our old friend the custard-apple.
Vanity of vanities, sayeth the preacher, all is
vanity
Hence Beejapoor is the biggest ghost of past
times in the Deccan. Even during its palmy
days, say of Tara or Afzulkhan, the dead were
more carefully looked after than the living. Every
man had his coffin, so to speak, in his own cup-
board, and of course there was a skeleton in
every house. The only trade for a century seems
to have been building mausoleums, and the only
commerce carrying stones to them. You can
scarcely move without breaking your shins
against a gravestone. The moral of Beejapoor
seems to be that men had better look after their
own reputation during their lives, and leave
nothing to posterity, for posterity has done noth-
ing for them but rifle their tombs and scatter
their ashes to the winds of heaven, though they
did everything in their power to prevent this
consummation.
DOVES
Seem to affect mosques all over the East :
witness the mosque of Omar ; and you remember
BEEJAPOOR.e. 447
the sacred pigeons of Mecca, which have been
noticed by every traveller from Vertomannus to
Burton. Burckhardt tells us (1814) that nobody
dares to kill them, and that they are called the
sacred pigeons of Beitullah, the house of God,
and another (1503) that they are believed to be
the progeny of the dove that spake in the ear of
Mahommed in the likeness of the Holy Ghost.
Witness also the two white doves on the body of
Hassan at the Mohurrum. Here in Beejapoor, as
in Mecca, or for that matter before the Bombay
Custom House, a man comes daily with food for
the pigeons. I watched these white messengers
descending from the sky on Christmas Day, our
only visitors—emblems of its peace and purity.
There is no smoke in Beejapoor to soil their
wings. See Cromwell’s favourite Psalm of
David :—
“Like doves ye shall appear,
Whose wings with silver and with gold,
Whose feathers cover'd are.”
And the
“Though ye have lain among the pots *
by way of emphasis. !
The sky here is very blue and transparent, and
throws the outlines of fretted cornice and grace-
ful minaret in sharply-cut and delicate relief,
448 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
The doves alighted with noiseless foot on the
great flat pavement that spreads out in one stony
sheet between the Mosque and Mausoleum of
Ibrahim. As they stood between the living and
the dead, on that space where thousands of
worshippers had once bent the knee with their
faces to the west, invoking the one God and the
one Prophet, they seemed to read a lesson of
peace and good-will to men.
The voice of war is now hushed over all India.
Long may it be so I The doves of the Ibrahim
Roza have come here for generations, and will
doubtless do so for generations to come. There
was one day, however, you may be sure, they did
not come. That day was the 15th October, 1686,
when Aurungzeb amid the hurly-burly of war
stumbled from his scarlet-curtained palanquin,
and, drunk with the lust of ambition, piled his
bloody garments in the Sanctuary of the Roza.
SHEEP AND DOGS.
Why do black sheep eat more than white ones
in India? Because there are more of them.
The comundrum is attributed to Archbishop
Whately. Very much the case on the way to
Beejapoor, where black sheep abound. There are
some sheep dogs too. Marvellously like the
BEEJAPOOR. 449
Scots colley; and they look quite as astute and
sagacious. s
“His breast was white, his touzy back
Weel clad in coat o' glossy black.”
This is his sitting portrait, with his tongue out
of his mouth, palpitating, with his eye on, and
much exercised about, his flock, more touzy than
himself. He slinks away, however, on our
approach, with his tail between his legs, and in
this fails miserably as the counterpart of Burn's
next two lines on the “Twa Dogs:”
“His gaucie tail, wi upward curl,
Hung ower his hurdies wis, swirl.
Culture, however, will do much for dogs and
men. In the far north a minister was descant-
ing on some dreadful boat accident in India
wherein 400 coolies had perished. The word is
little known in these regions; and a shepherd’s
wife in the evening commented with her hus-
band on the dismal tragedy to the dog world, when
sheep dogs were five pounds a piece, or when there
was no market for them, as “maebody would buy
a bad ane, and naebody would sell a gude ane.”
Husband loquitur : “Whare would sae mony
colleys be ganging tae, dae ye think, Janet 7”
Wife's reply : “I ken mae place. Aiblins it
was to a Falkirk Tryst"—which, we mention for
57
450 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
the benefit of the uninitiated foreign reader, is
the greatest sheep fair that is held in Scotland.
FAMINE.
No one, in travelling from Sholapoor to Beeja-
poor, could believe that this country so lately as
three years ago was so mercilessly struck down
by famine. You can see nothing of it, every-
thing seemed gay and prosperous. Jowaree and
other crops are abundant until within a dozen
miles of Beejapoor, when the country partakes of
the character of the English downs. Not “all in
the downs we lay ” of Blackey’d Susan, but good
golfing ground, if the likeness to the St.
Andrew’s Links does not deceive us. Some of
the men seemed to want filling up between the
ribs sadly, but no doubt this year's crop will
supply the deficiency. - -
We saw one man, but only one, a relic of the
famine days, and apparently beyond all remeid a
veritable death-and-Doctor Hornbook business —
“Its stature seemed lang Scotch ells tºwa,
The queerest shape that e'er I saw,
For feint a wanne it had ava 3
And then its shanks,
They were as thin, as sharp and sma
AS cheeks o' branks.”
THE COUNTRY ABOUT BEEJAPOOR.
Far from being a desert, seems capable of ex-
BEEJAPOOR.e. 451
tended cultivation, and in its palmy days, with
its garden-houses of the nobility, must have been
a mass of greenery. The surrounding country,
covered with coarse grass, presents a brown and
tame appearance; so the city itself must have
been seen from afar, a green emerald, like Damas-
cus. There is plenty of water, from wells and
otherwise, and in ancient times, like the Damas-
cus of to-day, it ran down the sides of every street,
for an aqueduct conveyed water for twenty miles.
The Adamsonia-trees are African, and of enor-
mous girth; and we allude to them because if they
are weighted with a thousand years, they point to
remote times, when the Hubshee made his first
appearance in the Deccan.* The big dome has
been painted white, by whom we know not; but
the colour at some distance, and even near at
hand, detracts from its bulk, and it is only when
the side, next the spectator is thrown in shadow
that its great size is realised. St. Peter’s looks
brown from the sea, the tombs of the Kaliphs at
Cairo are as grey as the desert, and all other
domes, east and west, are either gilded or painted
black. Viewed from a distance of twenty miles,
* Goruk Imlee, Adamsonia. These enormous trees are
ointed out, under Which the malefactors were beheaded.
William Taylor of Patna when here was in search of big trees,
and ought to have 'Seen these. They are stumpy, but in girth
Fººting of only one trunk must beat anything out of
all IOI’Ill&.
452 IBOOK OF BOMBATſ.
the sense of colour is lost, and it cleaves the
horizon without a single object to compete with
it, in the view, either natural or artificial, a great
hemisphere on the skyline. -
GLOBE-TROTTERS.
The first globe-trotter who came to Western
India was Tom Coryat. Taylor, the Water-poet,
thus eulogises him, and perhaps gives us the
germs of the word :
“Let poets write their best and trotters run,
They ne'er shall write or run as thou hast done.”
The time will arrive when a number of men and
women from Europe and America, blasé with
Greece and the Nile, will come to Beejapoor. The
big dome and the Kailas of Ellora will take their
places as the two great wonders of Western India.
There will be a railway-station there, and the
telegraphic wires will bisect the citadel, as they
do the ruins of Baalbek. We shall no doubt, in
due time, hear much that is novel and interesting
about Beejapoor. It behoves our Government to
see that no so-called improvement mars the
antique grandeur and simplicity of these ex-
quisite monuments of antiquity, and that in our
zeal for their restoration, we do not accelerate
their decay, or the decay of that which is most
|BEEJAPOOR." 453
noble and beautiful (we will not say venerable
with Mackintosh’s words before us) about them.
Time is a ruthless destroyer, but not half so
ruthless as that zeal which under the pretence
of repair effects only to destroy, and we must
beware of this kind of renovation and see that
the iconoclasts do not proceed from ourselves.”
The greatest living authority on architecture
has declared that these buildings are worthy of
all the care we can bestow upon their preserva-
tion. Our first great duty is therefore to protect
them from ourselves, and our second from the
hands of our neighbour.
There are pieces of sculpture in the Roza of
Ibrahim which we venture to say, as sculptured
ornaments throughout the world, are unique, and
if destroyed or taken away, to use a mild word,
could never be replaced. We mean the stone
chains, the links of which, cut out of one block,
dangle from the cornice and hang gracefully be-
tween each arch. They are thirty or forty feet
overhead and far beyond ordinary reach, but they
are not beyond the avarice and ingenuity of the
* The last Rajah of Satara, in whose kingdom Beejapoor was,
when on a visit amused himself with picking out the jºin;
arabesque, and lacquered work with the point of his sword. It
is said that the Bombay Government have already spent £80,000
on repairs and preservation, 80 We cannot be accused of want of
interest in Beejapoor, -
454 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
stone collector, who could soon devise ways and
means to attain them. We all know what has
been done in this way in Upper Egypt. For
preservation, therefore, and in view of an influx
of sight-seers, we would recommend the dis-
continuance of the Roza as a hostelry. The
Dome of Mahmood and the Mosque and
Mausoleum of Ibrahim Roza, in fact, require
each a keeper to watch these buildings, so that
travellers may be taken over them, as they are in
the Mosque of Omar, or any of the great sight
buildings in the world.
The student who may now find his way from
Western India to any of the Universities of Eu-
rope need not be ashamed of his country. It
is a great country, and great in its memorials of
ancient times. What India has given to Europe
is at present an unknown quantity. In race and
language, in physics and metaphysics, in reli-
gion—and this is a very unknown quantity, and
possibly very small—in commerce and trade, in
astronomy and medicine, in the arts and sciences,
philosophers continue to investigate and grope
their way.
One day it is found that Sanskrit is the basis
of all European languages; another that the
BEEJAPOOR. 455
germs of the feudal system exist in the village
community in India; and an American has just
made out that India built Palmyra, Tyre, and
Alexandria, and that the world is indebted to her
for the discovery of America. Columbus was
only thinking of India and the way thither when
his vessels were driven against the New World.
If the student is taunted with the statement that
India exported in ancient times only apes and
peacocks, he can smite his enemies hip and thigh
by telling them that the first iron,” the first silk,
and the first cotton came to Europe from India;
that it was the frankincense of India that was
burned on the altars of Rome, Athens, and
Jerusalem; that before Sir Christopher Wren,
the architect of St. Paul’s, was born, Mahmood
had hung in the air a dome, with a larger area
than that of the Pantheon at Rome ; that when
Catholics were being burned at Smithfield and
Protestants at Goa, Christians were tolerated at
Nuldroog and Raichore, and received firmans
* The Supply of iron in India, as early as the fourth and fifth
centuries, seems to have been unlimited. In the temples of
Orissa iron was used in large masses, as beams or girders in
roof work in the thirteenth century, and India well repaid any
advantages which she may have derived from the early civilised
communities of the West if she were the first to supply them
with iron and steel.—Sir John Hawkshaw's openinſ, address,
British Association meeting, Bristol, 1875. The authenticity of
the Book of Ezekiel has never been impeached, and “bright iron
and steel ” are mentioned by him as items in his great display of
ancient Oriental commerce.
456 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
which still exist from the Sultans of Beejapoor;
and that courtesy itself is indigenous to India
and sprang unaided by either the chivalry or the
Crusades of Europe. Truly, as the poet hath it,
the pathway of human progress has been from
the East.
“Westward the course of Empire takes its way:
The first four acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
TIME's NOBLEST of FSPRING IS ITS LAST.”
THE MARTYRS OF TANNA.
459
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MARTYRS OF TANNA.
IN or about the year of our Lord 1321 four
men suffered death for their religion at Tanna.
As the Reformation did not take place for one
hundred and twenty years after this, Roman
Catholics and Protestants may be supposed to
have an equal interest in the event. We are in-
debted for an account of it to Orderic, a Fran-
ciscan friar who arrived in Tanna shortly after.
Four minorites, whose names were Thomas of
Tolentino, James of Padua, Peter of Siena, and
Demetrius, a lay brother, were living in the
house of a Nestorian, of which sect there were
fifteen families in Tanna. On being brought
before the Kazee, and questioned as to their be-
lief, they stated that Christ was the very God,
460 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
and one of them rashly replied that he believed
Mahomet was the son of perdition, and was in
hell with his father the devil. The end is easily
foreseen. The people shouted out for their
death. Tanna is a hot place, and they were first
bound and exposed bare-headed (we all know
what that means to a monk) in the sum from 9
till 3, the six hottest hours of the day. This had
no effect. Then James of Padua was thrown
twice into a fire. The result was the same. The
ruler of the town then sent them away secretly
to a suburb across the arm of the sea. This
could not be far from that part where the railway
bridge, from Salsette, mow joins the mainland.
But the Kazee persuaded the Melik or ruler to send
men after them to kill them. Thomas, James, and
T)emetrius were beheaded. Peter, who had not
been with the others, was next day tortured and
cut asunder. On hearing of this massacre, the
Emperor at Delhi, Gheias-ud-din Toghlak, sent
for the Melik, and, upbraiding him for daring
to inflict death on those whom God had twice
preserved, ordered him to be executed.
It is very easy in this age of rosewater to say
that they behaved imprudently, and courted
martyrdom. The Great Moghul did not think so.
The narrative is full of legend and miracle, but
THE MARTYRS OF TANNA. 461
the air was dense with these articles of belief, and
Thomas of Tolentino, if not a spectator, was cer-
tainly alive when the greatest wonder of the age
is said to have taken place, to wit, the transmigra-
tion of the Holy House of Loretto from the shores
of Palestine to very nearly his own door in 1294.
But divested of legend and superstition the
facts remain the same. These Italian monks, to
whom we owe the first seeds of the gospel in
India” were the earliest Christian rmissionaries
from Europe, of which we have any exact record.
That the martyrdom took place, we think, there
cannot be the shadow of a doubt. Orderic men-
tions some facts about Tanna, casually, which
must have astounded the Europe gentlemen of
the fourteenth century. That there were flying
foxes—that the rats there were so big that the
cats could not kill them,--that ants and other
vermin were fed by the charitable, and that there
did not appear to be a nail or a piece of iron
fastening in their boats. “He that is faithful in
that which is least is faithful also in much.”
Their bodies were buried at Sopara, about four
miles from Bassein, a place identified with the
Ophir of Holy Scripture (and famous in 1882
* The vexed question of the Nestorians in India we leave out
of sight for the present.
462 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
for the unearthing of some fine Buddhist relics);
but, be that as it may, no gold-dust in the
A wrea ChersoneSws, was so precious to the early
Christians. At the distance of 550 years we
may well despair of presenting more than the
flimsiest sketch of a voyage from Ormus to
Tamma. It lasted 28 days—sailing by day and
coming to anchor in some creek or harbour for
the night. It was their way in those times, and
dispensed with observations during the night and
gave a clear outlook for reefs and pirates. The
custom still lingers in the bandar boat cruise
now-a-days. Their longest stretch was from
Diu to Damaon across the Gulf of Cambay. At
length Danu, Tarapur, Deravi, Versova, and
Mahim were passed—giving a wide berth to the
fishing stakes. On leaving Versova the tall
palmyras on the ridge of Walkeshwur came in
view on the verge of the horizon. And so work-
ing the “Jehaz” round its columnar cliffs fretted
by the everlasting surf they made their way into
the greatest harbour of Western India. The
buggalow which brought these missionaries from
Ormus was driven in by a storm. The places
visible to the eye on leaving the open sea we shall
endeavour to describe by their old names, as they
first heave themselves in sight on the page
THE MARTYRS OF TANNA. 463
of history. Khenry Island, well wooded; Wal-
keshwur covered with rocks, woods, and long
grass amid which were almost Smothered the
Hindoo sanctuary, and tank of the same name
with a temple to the triform god at the very
extremity. The Yoni or famous stone of Regene-
ration on the water edge. The two Colabas,
mother and daughter, though the sea rushed
violently between them, seemed perfectly united,
and on Dewa Dandee, we will place a beacon light,
“impugn it whoso list.” Along the ridge of
these islands there grew a thin green line of
palms. But palms were everywhere from Cape
Bombaim to the site of the city destined to arise
here, covering it, and the ground far beyond it in
one continued forest ending in the great woods of
Mahim. Somewhere hereabouts, we may be sure,
appeared (say on the site of the Crawford Market)
the proverbial fisherman, and the bittern stand-
ing on one leg amid his empire of desolation.
There were two islands with strange names, Deva.
Devi, the “isle of the gods,” and Chinal Tikri
(Cross-island), the “hill of the harlots.” Between
them lay a third—one of the wonders of the
world—Garapooree, or the “town of excavations,”
conspicuous by its black colossal elephant and
stone horse, and more famous for its caves, so
464 Book of BOMBAY.
full of idols and of graven images, that it might
have been well called by Christian, Jew, or Sara-
cen the “ hill of devils.”
So sailing on, but now in quieter water, be-
tween Trombay with its Neat’s Tongue and Peer’s
Tomb on the left, and on the right Kurmala, that
mighty pillar of basalt which has been for all
ages a landmark to the sailor making this port of
India, they reach Tamma. -
If they entered the harbour from the Arabian
Sea on a starry might between April and Septem-
ber, they would see over the high land of Thull, a
little above the horizon, the “ Southern Cross,”
the symbol of their faith, and a welcome har-
binger to this land of heathendom.
Tanna was visited by Marco Polo about forty
years previously. The Tanna of to-day does not
seem to be a pleasant place. In the early days of
the monsoon when the tide is out and at sun
down, with rain falling, the view from the rail-
way bridge is one of the dismallest a man can
cast eyes on. Of the young civilian, often sent
there on his first outset, we may write—
“The sun’s eye had a sickly glare,
The earth with age was wan,
The skeletons of nations were
Around that lonely man.”
We cannot rebuild or repeople in our imagina-
THE MARTYRS OF TANNA. 465
tion the Tamma of Marco Polo, but we may be
certain of this, however, that though the town
was a very different place, the topographical sur-
roundings are still the same, and in this respect
Tanna was seen by Marco Polo and these early
missionaries very much as we see it to-day. A
creek, fringed with cactus and palm, up which
twice a day, the tide rushes with remarkable
velocity, converting its dry and rocky bed into
the dimensions of a navigable river, the creek
widening out gradually into an estuary, now the
harbour of Bombay, and beyond—the illimitable
sea, for the flapping of the great sails of Cabral
and Da Gama’s fleets was as yet unheard on the
Indian Ocean.
The land side was bounded by a barrier of
rugged mountains clothed with teak and iron
wood over which could be descried the sharp
saw-like edges and peaks of the Chanda and
Bhowmalang range and the untrodden solitudes
of Matheran.
Not far off was Dewah, a scene that has been
taken by many painters and found its way to the
Royal Academy. Now-a-days, this scene of sur-
passing beauty bursts upon the eye of the travel.
ler as he emerges from the first tunnel which
pierces the mainland of India, one of the magical
59
466 t BOOK OF BOMBAY.
reaches of this Indian Bosporus which clasps in
its arms the islands of Bombay and Salsette,
“Whose gleaming with the setting sun
One burnish’d sheet of living gold,
And islands that empurpled bright,
Floated amid the livelier light,
Crags, mounds, and knolls confusedly hurl’d,
The fragments of an earlier world.”
Of the manner of life of these missionaries we
know nothing, but we know a good deal about
those among whom they laboured. Velvet weav-
ers, buckram weavers, weavers of Tanna cloths,
vendors of betelnut, artificers of blackwood,
leather manufacturers, noisy horse coupers from
Arabia, with wild pirates and lawless fishermen
(for in those days there was great shipping at
Tanna) a brawling, shouting, seething multitude,
every man of them Muslim or idolator. Such
was the hostile population amid whose lot was
cast the protomartyrs of Christianity in Western
India. It is sad to believe that when the
Portuguese took Tanna 200 years afterwards
there was not a single Christian in it.
NOTE ON THE GOLD OF OPHIR.
But we must now deal with the gold of Ophir
which has cropped up in this article. We have
a great respect for gold either as ore, bullion, or
THE MARTYRS OF TANNA- 467
coin, it does not matter much, and if we can only
bring it nearer to Bombay so much the better.
We may add that as silver depreciates in value
this respect increases all the more, and we will,
therefore, endeavour to speak of gold with be-
coming reverence. Ophir is mentioned in Genesis
X, 29, and since that time he has had a troubled
existence; like the dove from Noah's ark finding
no rest for the sole of its foot. In our young days
Niebuhr placed Ophir in Arabia. It was soon
after removed by somebody across the Arabian
Sea to Sofala in Africa. After a consumptive
existence in Africa, it died out and suddenly
under the giant auspices of Max Müller the lusty
child reappears on the banks of the Indus at a
place called Patalene, and Sir Charles Napier,
if we remember rightly, when living in Clifton
(Kurrachee) amused himself in the belief that the
golden cup of Alexander (Ophir no doubt) lay
hidden in the Gedrosian sands thereabouts. This
belief again was rudely dispelled by the German
critic Lassen who “ conclusively demonstrated *
that the Ophir of Job and Solomon was in
Guzerat. The réghur, or black cotton soil of
Guzerat, is rather an awkward matrix for gold ;
but never mind. It is satisfactory so far, our
readers will observe, that Ophir is in the right
468 IBOOK OF BOMBAY.
direction, and coming nearer to us, step by step
on the golden ladder. We have mentioned its
arrival near Bassein ; and the arguments for its
localisation here are neither so flimsy nor so un-
substantial as at first sight may be imagined.
Sopara is near Bassein. It is mentioned by
Ptolemy and the author of the Periplus. Ophir
is spelled in the Septuagint Sophir, and Jose-
phus says Ophir is in the Aurea Chersonesus
which belongs to India. Now, where is there
another Chersonesus on this side of India except
the Bombay group of islands? From Sopara
comes Sophir—Ophir. But our readers must
make their own deductions. , Dr. Wilson used
playfully to remark that the Scotch were Scy-
thians and were in India ages ago. Had not
the letters Scyt been deciphered on the dolmens
of Upper India P. Scyt, Scoot Scot. “So runs
the dread anathema.” We turn up with fear
and trembling Smith’s Classical Dictionary, the
highcist authority we can lay hands on, and
under the head Scythae is this sentence which we
confess seems to prove the Doctor's theory correct,
and is a damning argument against the non-
Scythian hypothesis. “The Scythians had no fixed
habitations, but roamed over a vast tract of
country at their pleasure.” This decides the
TIII, MARTYRS OF TANNA. 469
question. Of course, the Scotch are Scythians.
Then as to Ophir.
Men like to deal in generalities and will never
come to particulars. Arabia, Africa, Sind,
Guzerat are fine names, in which it is exceeding-
ly easy for Max Müller and others to place the
Land of Ophir, words
“Full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing,”
making of it a geographical expression pure and
simple. It is a great matter, therefore, to have
Ophir, once for all, localised, identified ; moored
to one place the latitude and longitude of which
can be easily determined. * * * * We had
written thus far when an uneasy feeling takes
possession of us. After having fixed Ophir on as
solid a basis as this terraqueous globe affords, in an
evil hour we glanced at the newspapers where some
preposterous individual, we had used a stronger
word, writes to a Glasgow paper (of all places
in the world) that Wynaad is the Land of Ophir.
This is really too much. We cannot afford to
have gold passing us in this way. Gold has al-
ways been a welcome guest in Bombay. Norman
Macleod dubbed us “worshippers of fire and of
fine gold.” We therefore protest against it.
Take our apes and our peacocks, and, even our
470 BOOK OI! BOMBAY.
algum trees, but give us our gold. It is too bad.
If this continues, Bassein may become an Irish
quaking bog and run away with us. Ophir may
drift away from its moorings, and leave us like
Pogson at Madras, just in time from our garret
window to see it clear our line of vision—a comet
of the first magnitude.
We have done all we can to establish Ophir in
our neighbourhood. But some men will not be-
lieve it. Though we sympathise with their incre-
dulity we say to all such unbelievers what Waller
addressed to the Lord Protector of England—
“To dig for wealth, we weary not our limbs,
Gold though the heaviest metal hither swims,
Ours is the harvest which the Indians mow,
We plough the decp and reap what others sow.”
THE HON’BLE E. I. COMPANYS
FIRST SHROFF IN GUJARAT.
473
CHAPTER XIX.
THE HON’BLE E. I. COMPANY'S
FIRST SHROFF IN GUJARAT.
TRAWADI SHRI KRISHNA ARJUNJI NATHJI
OF SURAT.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE “BOMBAY GAZETTE.”
SIR,--I have read with much interest the lively
sketch given in your paper of Saturday last (3rd
Sept. 1881) regarding Napoleon Bonaparte at Suez
in 1798. In the last but one para. of the sketch
the writer, while giving an account of the Forbes’s
loans, challenges inquiry as to whether any native
prince or merchant of those days did, or offered
to do, what Sir Charles Forbes did. I am not
aware of any native prince, of that period, hav-
60
474 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
ing rendered pecuniary assistance to the Com-
pany in the shape of loans; but there is one
native banker of the time who was once well-
known all over Gujarat and India as the Hon’ble
Company’s shroff. He financed for the Com-
pany on a scale of magnitude which surprised
even the Agents of the Company themselves.
Unfortunately the monetary transactions of the
Company before the 30th June, 1813, when pub-
lic loans began, find no place in the published
records of the period. I do not therefore wonder
that, in the absence of such published testimony,
it should be supposed that the Company received
no loans from native merchants, and that the
rupee loans actually began with Sir Charles Forbes.
I have, however, seen copies of letters and
certificates from the Hon’ble Company’s Agents.
of the time to this well-known banking firm of
Surat, which show that long before Sir Charles
Forbes’s relations with the Company began, the
Company supplied its financial needs through the
banking house of Trawadi Shri Krishna Arjunji
Nathji. The memory of this house as the Com-
pany’s principal shroffs in those days still lives in
Surat and Gujarat. While, therefore, fully shar-
ing in the credit given to the eminent lºnglish
banker whose name is still a household word in
E. I. Co.'s FIRST SHROFF IN GUJARAT. 475
Bombay, it is fit, I think, that the services of this
native firm, rendered as they were at a time when
the different European Powers were competing
with each other for power and pelf in the East,
and which laid the foundation of England’s pre-
sent magnificent Indian Empire, should not be
permitted to be altogether consigned to oblivion.
The first recorded acknowledgment of the Com-
pany’s obligations to this native banking house
bears, I find, the date of the 23rd November,
1759. It is signed by Mr. John Spencer, Chief
of Surat, and four of his Assistants, and runs as
follows:—“These are to certify that the house of
Trawadi was employed in transacting the money
matters at Delhi relative to the procuring for the
English a firman for the castle and a sanad for
the fleet, in which they acted with great pumc-
tuality and fidelity. This writing is therefore
given them as testimony of their good behaviour,
and to show that the house is deserving of the
countenance of the Hon’ble Company in case of
any oppression to them.” This testimony is con-
firmed by another from Mr. R. H. Boddam, who
writes under date the 4th December, l'783, as t
below:—“I do hereby declare that since my re-
sidence here as Chief of Surat, Trawadi Arjunji
476 HOOK OF BOMBAY.
Nathji has always shown great attention and
diligence for the interests of the Hon’ble East India
Company, and has, by the transactions of his
house as shroff, rendered them every assistance
and Service in his power, which at various times
have been very essential.” Sir Charles Forbes’s
transactions with the East India Company
were indeed on a very large—I should say,
considering the character of the period—
stupendous scale, but they did not, it seems
to me, begin before the seat of Government
was removed from Surat to Bombay, and
the trade of India was thrown open to private
enterprise. But before and even after Bombay
became the seat of Government and private
European enterprise found scope to develop
itself, the Hon’ble Company had found that its
business on its hands had overgrown its legiti-
mate limits ; and what with the advances to
native weavers and others on the one hand, and
the prosecution of wars with native rulers and
European rivals on the other, the demands for
monetary assistance pressed too hard upon the
Company. And the records of the Company's
Office at Surat would appear to bear ample testi-
mony to the fact of Trawadi Arjunji Nathji’s
E. I. Co.'s FIRST SHROFE IN GUJARAT. 477
rupee loans often proving the turning point
in the Company’s fortunes, when the pros-
pects of raising money elsewhere seemed quite
remote,
Trawadi Shri Krishna Arjunji Nathji was a
Nagar Brahman by caste. Originally coming
from Bemares, his ancestors settled in Surat for
purposes of business. In Shri Krishna’s time
the house was known by the name and style of
Trawadi Arjunji Nathji. Before coming into
close relations with the Hon’ble Company, the
dealings of the house were chiefly with the Arab
merchants who arrived in Surat for interchange
of goods. The fame of Surat had then extended
far and wide. Neibuhr, who visited the city in
1762, describes it “as the storehouse of the most
precious productions of Hindustan. Hither is
brought from the interior parts of the Empire an
immense quantity of goods, which the merchants
carry in their ships to the Arabic Gulf, the coast
of Malabar, the coast of Coromandel, and even
to China. The provinces near the city are full
of manufactures of all sorts.”
Trawadi Arjunji
Nathji was about this time reputed to be one of
the richest bankers in Gujarat. Much of his
wealth was made in course of his dealings with
478 BOO1C OF BOMBAY.
the Arabs. He curtailed these dealings as his
relations with the Hon’ble Company became
closer and closer. In 1804 the Company was at
war with Holkar. Holkar sought the protection
of the Chicf of Bhurtpore. In the following year
war broke out between Bhurtpore and the Eng-
lish. We know the result. The troops under
Lord Lake were victorious. But how came the
victory to be won 2 The Company was sorely
pinched for monoy. Jonathan Duncan, in his
letters to the Company’s Agents at Surat de-
scribed in pitiful terms the condition of the troops,
who were left in arrears, and reduced to misery
for want of supplies. Native bankers, seeing the
fortunes of the Company trembling in the
balance, shrunk back from lending money at a
time when it was most needed. Jonathan Dun-
can, knowing where successfully to apply for
loans, wrote to the Chief Agent at Surat to open
negotiations with Trawadi Arjunji Nathji. Tra-
wadi consented to make an advance, and a sum
of 32 lakhs of rupees was counted out in hard
coin. Trawadi's house was situated in Balaji’s
Chukla in Surat, and the story goes that carts
loaded with rupee bags cxtended in long, con-
tinuous rows from Balaji's Chukla to the Nausari
E. I. Co.'s FIRST SHROFF IN GUJARAT. 479
Gate. The joy and thankfulness of the Company
on obtaining this loan may be easily conceived.
The Government of India were not more sur-
prised by the amount of the loan than by the
feelings of fidelity and attachment to their cause
which dictated it. Trawadi’s services were ac-
knowledged by them with khiluts, medals, and
grants, and recorded in handsome terms in
minutes for the information of the Com-
pany’s Directors in England. Trawadi, it is
said, was made a member of the Council at
Calcutta, what this means I cannot say,+
and officially proclaimed as the Company’s Shroff
in India.
A little before this the Gackwar was suffering
from pecuniary embarrassments. The pay of his
Arab Sebundies had been in arrears for many
years. They had sat dharna. The Gaekwar
himself was deprived of his liberty, and his life
was in imminent danger. In these circumstances
he applied to the Hon’ble last India Company
for help. The Company thought proper to aſſord
him the needed aid, and thereby restore quiet at
Baroda. The first step towards this was of course
to pay off the Arab Sobundies. How was this
to be done P This was the question of questions.
The Company had no funds to spare. Jonathan
480 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Duncan earnestly requested Trawadi Arjunji
Nathji to advance three lakhs of rupees to the
Gaekwar. Trawadi hesitated. At the same time
he did not like to displease Jonathan Duncan,
who pressed him strongly to make the advance.
Trawadi demanded British guarantee to secure
repayment of the loan, and on this being accord-
ed the loan was made, and the Gaekwar saved
from a very critical and embarrassing position.
In recognition of this and other valuable ser-
vices, the Hon’ble Company procured for
Trawadi a hereditary and permanent grant from
the Gaekwar, of the village of Shewni, in
the pergunna of Timba under the Surat Attavisi
Mahals. ºr
On the death of Jonatham Duncan, the Govern-
ment of India recommended Trawadi Arjunji
Nathji to the countenance and favour of the Bom-
bay Government. In a letter dated the 31st July,
1812, the Indian Government pointed out that
“although the merit of Arjunji Nathji’s fidelity
and attachment to the British Government is too
well-known to render any letter of recommenda-
tion necessary, yet the Governor-General is in-
duced to grant this indulgence as well for the
purpose of gratifying his earnest wishes, as in
compliance with the custom which has been
E. I. Co.'s FIRST SHROFF IN GUJARAT. 481
observed when similar applications have been
made on former occasions. In compliance with
his solicitations, therefore, I am directed to fur-
mish Arjunji Nathji with this letter to your
address, and to desire that you will convey
to the Hon’ble the Governor the Right
Hon’ble the Governor-General’s recommendation
of Arjuuji Nathji to his countenance and
favour.”
In 1813 war broke out with Nepal, and Arjunji
Nathji supplied funds necessary to prosecute it.
What the amount of advances he made to Gov-
ernment was is not stated ; but it is a fact that
on the successful termination of the war, the
Government bestowed upon Trawadi a khilut
“for the joy of the capture of Nepal,” Mr. Secre-
tary Prendergast recording the following appro-
bation of his services :-‘‘ I have no hesitation in
saying that the records of the Chief Office bean
numerous and very decided testimony of the
merit and services of Trawadi, and proofs of his
fidelity and attachment to the interests of the
Hon’ble Company.” In Surat Trawadi built
the temple of Shri Balaji, at a cost of three lakhs
of rupees, and endowed it with the revenues of
the village of Shewni, which had been granted to
6}.
482 BOOK OF BOMBATſ.
him in perpetuity by the Gaekwar. Trawadi died
in 1822, at the age of 72 years. It is sad to
reflect that the descendants of one who was at
one time the Rothschild of India are starving at
the present day in Surat.—Yours truly,
JEWERILAL U. YAJNIK.
Bombay, Sept. 6, 1881.
JAMES FOR BES,
CHAPTER XX.
JAMES FOR BES.
IN the records of Bombay James Forbes holds
a high place. He was an Englishman by birth
and breeding, of Scotch descent, and was not
related to the Bombay merchants who founded
about 1780 the greatest house of its day in India.
Sir Charles Forbes, the head of this firm for
forty years, was born in 1773. James Forbes
was born in 1749, came out to India in 1765 in
the Civil Service, returned finally to England in
1784, and died 1st August, 1819. The orthodox
pronunciation of this name, we believe, is Forbés
with an accent on the second syllable. Forbes
is pronounced thus by the natives, and so it was
by Sir Walter Scott. James Forbes left an only
daughter, who married a French Count, and by
this marriage came Forbes’s grandson, Charles
Forbes René Montalambert, the celebrated
French statesman, otherwise known as Count
486 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Montalambert, author of the Monks of the West,
and who died 14th March, 1870.
HIS BOOK
Was first published in four volumes quarto for
the author, and must have been a most expensive
one for him to bring out—quite a livre de luze,
we should think—in 1812. We learn, however,
that it was very popular. It is observable that
he did not publish it until 28 years after he had
left Bombay, when he was 62 years of age. So
he did not “rush into print,” but matured his
thoughts, bottling them up like old wine. These
Oriental Memoirs he dedicated to Sir Charles
Warre Malet, whose name is familiar to our
readers as Resident in Poona at the Court of the
Peshwa during the last decade of the last cen-
tury, Malet had been the friend of Forbes in
His youth, and his companion on several excur-
sions they made together in Western India.*
Forbes and his wife, while travelling on the
" " MALET-Forbes was a great admirer of Malet, and not
without reason, as the extracts from Malet's letters and journals
which he gives us are conclusive that he was a man of uncom-
mon powers and force of character. Malet married in India
Susannah, daughter of James Wales, the artist from Peterhead,
who died in Salsette, and is buried, we believe, at Tanna. Their
son, Sir Alexander Malet, once well-known in diplomatic circles
on the Continent, and an author, still lives, we believe. He mar-
ried Miss Spalding of the Holm, in Galloway, Lord Brougham's
step-daughter; and their son, Sir Edward Malet, now Consul-
General in Egypt, maintains the hereditary talent of this family,
and its connection with the East to the third generation,
JAMES FORIBES, 487
Continent during the French war in 1803, were
imprisoned at Verdun, but released in 1804.
The Royal Society and Sir Joseph Banks interest-
ed themselves in his behalf by writing to the
National Institute of France. M. Carnot was
then President, and Baron Cuvier Secretary, and
the grounds of his release were that he was a
man of science engaged in the preparation of this
great work. From Forbes’s own letter we learn
that the materials from which he projected its
publication consisted of 50 folio volumes com-
prising 52,000 pages of manuscript letters and
drawings by himself and other people. The book
is beautifully illustrated with 93 large pictures.
The originals of the engravings were drawn by
himself, for Forbes was a good sketcher. There
are coloured drawings of such specimens of the
Bombay animal and vegetable world as were then
little known in Europe.
There are three views of Bombay, which are
extremely valuable, as they exhibit to us the
appearance of the Bombay of his time. One is
from the sea, taken in 1773, another from Mala-
bar Hill in 1771, and a third of Bombay Green
in 1768. This last is a line engraving by the
elder Heath, who was a master in the art. The
view is taken from the roof of the Custom House,
488 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
where Forbes then lived, and the look-out in
these days was straight across, without interrup-
tion, to the Cathedral and the Old Secretariat in
Apollo Street, being then the Government House.
The carriage of His Excellency Governor Hodges,
drawn by four horses and preceded by a dozen
horn-blowers and bandoreen, is a conspicuous
object in this picture.
The palanquins are light and airy-looking, be-
ing open at the sides, and not the closed coffin-like
structures of our day. We observe an English-
man taking his constitutional on the Bombay
Green, shaded from the sun by a punkah some-
thing after the fashion of the Byculla Club ones,
or rather a banner screen perched upon a long
pole, which the bearer behind him elevates or
depresses as is necessary.
All the houses fronting the sea view are low,
for the obvious reason, we suppose, that they
would not challenge attack by an enemy in the
harbour. Hence the old Court House and Secre-
tariat—and we call them by the names they are
known by in 1882—bulk big and stand out con-
spicuous on the skyline. These buildings, we
need not say, are to-day completely obscured
from the point of view where the artist has
drawn his picture by the numerous buildings
JAMES FOR BES. 489
which have since cropped up between them and
the sea. Bombay Castle from the sea (as be-
cometh in 1773) is one frowning continuous line
of bastion and curtain, perforated with loop-
holes out of which peer the iron arbiters of fate.
None of those hideous monstrosities in the shape
of barns and cock-lofts have yet dared to show
themselves above vault and casemate, and offer
a tempting shot to the invader. Why they ever
should have done so, we are at a loss to conceive,
as there seems plenty of room for them else-
where. Let us cry—
“Latium be Latium still Let Alba reign,
And Rome's immortal majesty remain ſ”
One thing, however, has come down to us for
which we ought to be thankful. It used to be
said that Nature has done much for the Bombay
Harbour, and man very little.
Our readers must have often observed a very
tall palm-tree in the neighbourhood of the Cus-
tom House, towering aloft above all its fellows.
A similar tree stands out boldly in Forbes's view
of Bombay from the sea. We are told that a
palm-tree lives only a hundred years. Beit so;
we are willing to believe that this one is an excep-
tion to the rule, and, untouched by either cy-
clone or decay, still vindicates its title as a land
62
490 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
mark to those on land or on sea, near at hand or
far away. Altogether, this is a spirited picture,
the Union Jack where it is to-day, and a pennon
streaming gaily in the breeze from a tall flagstaff
on the Royal bastion of Bombay.
ARRIVAL IN BOMBAY.
When Forbes came out to Bombay, he had
not a single friend in it, nor a letter of introduc-
tion. A gentleman who came out with him took
him to call at a house, which, from the descrip-
tion of its collonade, flight of stairs, and its over-
looking the sea, seems to have been the old Court
House in Apollo Street. His host “took him by
the hand,” and, he tells us, “ did not let it go
for forty years.” He gave him what money he
needed, and he says all his success in life was due
to this man. Who he was we know not. We
know that he became Chairman of the East India
Company, bought an estate in Hertfordshire, and
lived until he was eighty. -
Before young Forbes was introduced to him
he had married a widow with two children, none
of whom had ever been in England. The boy
and girl grew up, and had a most romantic his-
tory. Governor Hornby married the young lady,
and they had a large family, one of whom pos-
JAMES FORBES. 491
isibly signs a lease—Jane Hornby—of the afore-
said building for twenty-one years to the East
India Company for a Court House. This was in
1807, and the witnesses are Patrick Hadow and
William Crawford. -
During Forbes’s time there was a great nuisance
in Bombay, to wit, divination and astrology.
Governor Hodges had petted a Brahmin sorcerer
to such an extent that he consulted him about
everything. He had prophesied many years
before that he would be Governor, but that a
black cloud was before him. Hodges took ill,
and was recommended to try the hot baths
at Desgaum, and had reached Fort Victoria at
|Bankote. “Freits follow them that fear them,”
says the Scot's proverb, so necromancy and
Hodges travelled in company. According to the
Hindu calendar, the 22nd February, 1771, was
an unlucky night, so he would not go out that
evening and take the air, “This is going to be
a critical night for me,” said he. Superstition
makes short work with sick men; and next
morning he was found sitting up in his bed with
his finger on his lip—dead. The secret was not
on his lips, for everybody knew it. He was
brought into Bombay, and buried in that Church
which is now our Cathedral. Forbes seems half
492 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
a believer in the second sight, and recites several
cases of events coming to pass that had been all
known and talked about years before in Bom-
bay. The Brahmin was thus a power in the
State.
William Hornby seems to have had a harder
head. Nevertheless, during the thirteen years
he was Governor of Bombay, his life must have
been rendered somewhat miserable by this
pertinacious and unscrupulous Brahmin. Hornby
had sent his wife and mother-in-law, the widow
aforesaid, home to England; but before going
the latter, at all events, had become the victim
of the Brahmin’s delusions, and it is our opinion.
that the Brahmin half-killed the daughter and
Killed the mother outright. The spectacle of
the mother walking on the sands of Back Bay,
looking out wistfully for the ship which was to
bring her son from his education in England, and
being reconnoitred by the Brahmin, who told her
she would never see him, is as strange as anything
that has ever been offered in the history of
demonology and witchcraft. Whenever any con-
solation was offered to these miserable wretches,
the only reply was, “Oh, the Brahmin, the
Brahmin l’’
This is what happens when people barter
JAMES FOR BES. 493
away the providence of God for the miserable
delusions of witchcraft. The keys of the invisi-
ble world are in safe keeping. When any man
or woman arrogated to himself or herself the
possession of them, the authorities sentenced the
man or woman to be publicly whipped at the
door of our Cathedral.” This was done, and
sometimes with good effect. But it was a very
different matter with the victims.
*,
WAYS AND MEANS.
When Forbes arrived in Bombay, his salary
was Rs. 30 a month, with house accommodation.
For some time he had a hard time of it, occa-
sionally going supperless to bed, and reading
Shakespeare by moonlight on the Custom House
roof for want of a candle, Duke Humphrey and
the Parish Lanthorn were thus often his only
companions. *
The Civil Servants in these days often com-
* WITCHCRAFT IN BOMBAY.—The records of the Court of Judi-
cature show that an ignorant woman, named Bastok, was more
than once whipped for what were called “diabolical practices.”
Like many Europeans of past days in India, this unfortunate
creature had imbibed native superstitions, and professed to cure
sick persons by the use of charmed rice. Convicted of this offence
on the 5th of July, 1724, she was admitted by the Court to have been
guilty of witchcraft not from evil intention, but from ignorance.
So they enlightened her dark mind in this wise :-The Court
orders” that she receive eleven lashes at the church door, and
after, she and all persons that are guilty of the like do such
enance in the church as is customary.”—Bombay Quarterly
eview, Vol. 2. .." -
494 18OOK OT BOMBAY.
plained, but the Company bluntly replied that
, they might go and get work elsewhere, remind-
ing them that they had some secret advantages.
“We wish to God that this were true,” say
they. The reference here was to the facility of
trading. But this facility to nine men out of
ten turned out a facility of ruining themselves.
Forbes was luckier than most of his contem-
poraries, for out of the seventeen young Civilians
who came out with him, he was the only one
who returned to England, the remaining sixteen
having gone over to the majority. But even
among those who stood the climate, and older
men, he was exceptionally fortunate. When
Forbes was coming home, he looked in at Goa
and found Crommelin there, who had joined the
service in 1732. Here he was, at the age of 80,
filling the subordinate post of Resident at Goa,
though he had been Governor of Bombay twenty
years previously. Richard Bourchier, who was
Governor when Clive was in Bombay, and gave
him a wigging, died pennyless. How Forbes
made his money he does not tell us, on the
principle, we suppose, of
“Aye keep something to yoursel
Ye dinna, tell to ony.”
It, however, oozes out. If he had liked he
JAMES FOR BES, 495
might have joined one of the Agency Houses,
which was perfectly allowable up to 1804, and
by which he need not have forfeited a single
privilege of the Civil Service. But he did not
do so.
He mentions the medium price of cotton when
he was at Broach as Rs. 70 to Rs. 80 per candy,
equal in these days to £8 to £9, and that it was
shipped only to Bengal and China. He adds by
the way, “ I had generally large commissions an-
nually to purchase cotton at Baroche for the Bom-
bay merchants. One of the principal frauds of
the cotton dealers was exposing the cotton,
spread out, on cowdung floors, to the nightly
dews. I often paid an unexpected morning visit
to at least a hundred of these small cotton mer-
chants. Like Gideon’s fleece spread upon the
floor, with an honest dealer the cotton was
perfectly dry ; if in the hands of a rogue,
you might, like him, wring out a bowl full of
water.”
Wet or dry, however, Gideon’s fleece was a
golden fleece ; at all events, the lad who went
supperless and candleless to bed was, at the age
of 35, master of the situation. What he paid for
his passage home he does not tell us; but in the
same ship one gentleman gave 5,000 guineas
496 JBOOK OF BOMBAY,
for the accommodation of himself, wife, and
family, and another paid £1,000 for himself
and wife.
HIS LIBRARY.
Though he left Bombay at an early age, he
never ceased to be a Bombay man. All his
feelings, ideas, and interests seem to centre in it.
Of Fryer in the seventeenth century he has a
profound reverence, which is little to be wonder-
ed at, as it is a kind of Bombay Bible, which you
shall take up again and again, and always find
some new thing. Like Fryer and Dr. Wilson,
Forbes was a member of the Royal Society.
He had a small library, and delighted much in
poetry. -
Pope, Goldsmith, Addison, Thomson his fa-
vourite bard, Beattie, Akenside, Prior, Mason,
and Falcomer were all at his fingers’ ends, and
he quotes largely from them. He found Homer
in India, to an extent that would astonish Pro-
fessor Macmillan. But the book of which he
found the most illustrations in India was the
Bible, and there is no end to his quotations of
manners and customs under this head. Some-
times they are very happy : as, for example,
when an English lady was reading of Rebekah
JAMES FOR BES. 497
carrying her pitcher on her shoulder, a native
female observed, “ Madame, that lady must have
been highcaste.”
JAMES FORBES AND THE LADIES OF BOMBAY.
Our author was not insensible to female beauty,
or the healthful society of virtuous women; for
without being a ladies’ man, he was never happier
than when he was among a bevy of his country-
women. In those immortal pictures of his, drawn
by his own hand, we can see the types of the Bom-
bay beauties of the time, with hair brushed back
from the forehead and towering overhead & la
Pompadour, reclining here, or seated there, in
an Indian wilderness, at a table laden with viands,
toast and sentiment going round, say under the
shadow of the big banyan-tree on the Nerbudda.
We can see him with his sister on the slopes of
Malabar Hill, drinking in that view of Bombay
and its islands which has delighted so many
generations. But, indeed, wherever we espy his
coat of cerulean blue we may be sure that a
saffrom China silk dress or a coal-scuttle bonnet
is not far distant. He feelingly bewails the sad
havoc which old Sol makes among the roses.
“The climate,” he says, “ is generally un-
favourable to the roses of my fair country-
Ö3
498 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
women in India, where the blushing flower of
love soon decays, and the jonquil subdues the
Snowy tints of the lily,” an allegory, the
solution of which we leave to our younger
readers.
He speaks of the fair and sprightly nymphs of
St. Helena, and the sable beauties of Bankote,
with antelope eyes, jetty hair, and garments like
the drapery of Grecian statues. Above all, he
speaks of Eliza, “ a lady with whom I had the
pleasure of being acquainted at Bombay, whose
refined tastes and elegant accomplishments
require no encomium from my pen.”
Trave words these from a witness of such a
character, though Eliza, at the age of 35, had
long since ended her pilgrimage. Probably more
sinned against than sinning, this verse may be
read by all who cast a stone at her :
“Herself from morn to eve, from eve to morn,
}Her own abhorrence and as much thy scorn;
The gracious smile unlimited and free
Shall fall on her, when Heaven denies it thee.”.”
There is a tendency now-a-days to magnify
the present at the expense of the past :-The
* ELIZA'S APPEARANCE AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS.—She had an
oval face, and an appearance of artless innocence, a transparent
complexign, brilliant eyes, and a melodious voice, with an intel-
ligent countenance and engaging manners. , Her conversational
and epistolatory, powers were considerable. She played the
piano and the guitar.—Bombay Quarterly IReview.
JAMES FORBEs. 499
Bombay men of a hundred years ago were very
much like ourselves. It is very easy to invest
James Forbes with the ridiculous. A long waist-
ed coat, knee-breeches, a queue hanging down at
the back of his neck, a three-cornered beaver,
and a habit of quoting scripture, and at Stanmore
Hill his pet sarus walking behind him like a
cassowary. Nevertheless he is
** An honest man close buttoned to the chin :
Broad-cloth without and a warm-heart within.”
We need not be frightened to look into the
Bombay of Eliza's period. Here is his account ;
he is speaking of acts of charity and benevolence.
“And here, with all the milder virtues belonging
to theirsex, my amiable country-women are entitled
to their full share of applause. This is no ful-
some panegyric; it is a tribute of affection and
truth to those worthy characters with whom I so
long associated, and will be confirmed by all who
have resided in India.”
In Sonapore burying-ground and over the dust
of several of the fair contemporaries of Eliza are
inscribed these unsophisticated words:–
“From her pleasing person and manners she was
much esteemed by all who had the pleasure of her
aquaintance”—
Words which we do not deem “vinsel trash,”
500 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
but which we are prepared to accept as a last
and a just tribute on the part of the survivors to
the merits of our country-women in Bombay a
hundred years ago.
DIANA ANE THE COBRA.
The following is in the best style of our illus-
trious author. We have heard many people
attempt to tell the story, but it is generally
bungled :—“Whether our hortensial snakes were
evil genii or guardian angels, I shall not deter-
mine. Haraby, the head-gardener, considered
them as the latter, and paid them religious venera-
tion. On that account I never disturbed them
until I had erected a cold bath in an orange and
lemon-grove for an English lady, who retired
thither at sunrise with her sable nymphs to
enjoy one of the greatest luxuries of the torrid
zone. This bath, perfectly concealed from view,
was more useful than ornamental, and very
unlike the lake of Diana or any of the modern
hummums in Oriental cities. It was, indeed,
little more than a humble shed, thatched with
the leaves of the palmyra, and though as sacred
to chastity as the Speculum Dianae or the gar-
dens of Susamma, it neither attracted an Acteon,
mor an elder of Babylon. It certainly did at-
JAMES FORRES. 50]
tract another visitor equally unexpected and
disagreeable, for one morning the young lady,
in the state of Musidora, was alarmed by a rust-
ling among the palmyra leaves which covered the
bath; and looking up beheld one of the garden
genii, with brilliant eyes under the expanded
hood of a large cobra de capello pushing through
the thatch and ready to dart on the fountain.
Pure and unadorned as Eve when her reflected
beauties first met her eye, the lady and her
handmaids made a precipitate retreat through
the grove and gained her chamber, heedless of .
gazers, whether in the form of gardeners, snakes,
or monkeys.” f -
THE EXECUTION OF GASSI RAM.
On a former page when speaking of Rajmachee
we gave Grant Duff’s account of this event, and an
intelligent Poona correspondent, in the Gazette,
added some particulars which have come down by
tradition. The account which we give in a foot-
note is by Sir Charles Malet, who was resident in
Pooma at the time—1791. It is more circumstan-
tial than either that of the Historian of the Mah-
rattas, or the account of the Poona correspondent.
It differs from them in several important parti-
culars, but may be regarded, we think, as the
Book of BoMBAY.
more correct version, as Malet was living in Poona
at the time, and familiar, no doubt, with all the
circumstances of the great tragedy.*
NATURAL HISTORY OF BOMBAY.
“I looked without seeing,” said Lord Chester-
field, but the remark could not be applied to
* GASSI RAM.–Communicated to me by Sir Charles Malet, as
a most extraordinary event which happened during his embassy,
at the Mahratta Court, in 1791. On the 29th of August thirty-
four men of the caste Of Telinga Brahmins having been confined
in a chokey or close room by the officers of the cutwal, the head
magistrate of police at Poona, twenty-one were taken out, dead
next morning, and the remaining thirteen were with difficulty
restored to life. In the evening the popular clamour’ became
violent against the cutwal, who was a Gour Brahmin, named
Gaunseram, a native of Aurungabad, and, whose office, in a city
where the most rigorous police is established, necessarily render-
ed him an obnoxious character. The Peshwa, improperly
yielding to the furious mob, delivered up the cutwal, who was
tied backwards on an elephant, and in that mannen conveyed
to a prison without the town, amidst the scoffs and insults of
the populace, while guards were sent to seize his family, depen-
dants, and property. The day following the clamour grew more
violent, being encouraged by many persons desirous of mortify-
ing the ruling minister, through the ignominy of his cutwal, his
dependant. The unhappy man was tied backwards on a camel,
and in that disgraceful manner reconducted into the city amidst
the reproaches of the people. Here he was made to alight, and
his head having been publicly shaved, he was again placed in the
same manner on the camel, and having been carried through the
rincipal Streets of Poona, escorted by a strong guard, he was
'or the last time led to a *8. about a mile from the city, and
there ordered to dismount. One of his hands was then strongly
fastened to the end of a turban between twenty and thirty feet
long, and the other end committed to some Hallalcores, the lowest
outcastes of the Hindu tribes, Who contaminate all other castes
by their touch. It was then made known to the Telinga Brah-
mins that the cutwal was delivered up entirely to their disposal,
either as a sacrifice to their vengeance, or an object for their
mercy: on which twelve Brahmins of that tribe in the most
savage manner immediately attacked the fallen magistrate with
large stones, The Hallalcores who held the turban by straitening
it kept him at full length running in a circle, pursued by his
relentless murderers, who at º by repeated blows on the
head and breast brought him to the ground: and then with an
eagerness disgraceful to humanity, , though merciful to the pros-
trate object of their cruelty, the Brahminical murderers dispatch-
ed him by a succession of large Stones thrown violently on his
head and breast.
JAMES FORBISS. 503
Forbes, for he was a close observer. The earth,
the air, and the sea were full of the wonders of
the Lord. He dilates on the fauna and ferae of
Bombay with delight, not such small deer as
jackals, squirrels, hedgehogs, bandicoots, and
musk rats, but he opens with the alligator, fierce
as the crocodile of the Nile. There is a sense
of disappointment, as in that chapter, we have
seen somewhere on “Snakes in Iceland,” when
we read further on, that this brute is seldom
seen on the Island. What would he have said
had he lived to the day when a tiger was slaugh-
tered in Mahim woods? Malet, who was a
great sportsman and writes shikar con amore,
supplies him with an account of his famous lion
hunt in Cambay, and he observes that the ibex or
wild goat of India is met with on the Raj
Pepli hills. g
Flowers are a perfect passion with him, and in-
sects a craze. There are beautifully coloured pic-
tures of the tailor-bird, the bottle-nested spar-
row, and the praying mantis. As the legend
goes (the scene may have been at Tanna),
Xavier, seeing one, requested it to repeat a can-
ticle, which it did Mantis religiosa / The con-
sumption of bullion by whiteants turns out, as
we expected, a delusion. The bottom of a trea-
504, BOOK OF BOMBAY,
sure-chest was caten away, the rupees sinking
and disappearing in the soft earth by their sheer
weight, much to the consternation of the
Revenue Collector and Cutcherry Shroff.
Strange to say, neither he nor any other na-
turalist that we know of notices the golden beetle
of Elephanta, sometimes caught as far off as
Matheran.
Forbes confounded the Pythagoreans at Baroda,
by showing them a drop of water in a micro-
scope, and a view of the animals they swallowed
every day of their lives. §
In this he anticipated Dr. Wilson's exhibition,
fifty years later in Guzerat. The Doctor was
more fortunate, as Mr. Forbes’s microscope was
Sroken to pieces as being a kind of Athanasius
contra mundum. Forbes was not a sportsman,
though he often went out with parties. He took
his book with him, verified the bag, and did not
waste gunpowder. He was better employed
looking after the commissariat and making the
midday meal a success. It was then he would
astonish his friends with a young sucking boar
roasted in spices and Madeira wine, to whet their
appetites and give them a bonne bouche, after
which his health was, no doubt, drunk all round
with all the honours, following which, as in the
JAMES FOR BES., 505
Surat week of 1781, the English ladies amused
themselves by running races on elephants.
NOTABLE THINGS,
Forbes was attached to the army of Ragobah
(Rugonath Row), and if he had written nothing
else, his book deserves to be remembered for his
account of it : 100,000 men and followers,
200,000 cattle, an immense city or camp moving
from place to place and eating up every green
thing—all trades and professions in it, from gold-
smiths to dancing-girls, realising the fabulous
armies of Cambyses, Xerxes, and others.
His time represents the first point of contact of
the English with the Mahratta Governments, and
the condition of the people is laid bare with an un-
sparing hand. In these times men concealed
wealth as they did murder. Every boy over four-
teen was armed, and when you sent for butter and
eggs, the peasant brought them with a drawn
scimitar.
It had been the aim of the English, when they
came to Bombay, to put down cruel and bloody
rites, and he tells us with gratification that to his
knowledge no woman had burned herself in
Bombay for fifty years, “ nor do I believe this
species of suicide has been allowed since the Eng-
lish possessed it ;” and he adds this commentary
64
506 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
—“ within six months 150 women, within thirty
miles of Calcutta, have sacrificed themselves.”
In reference to the suppression of infanticide,
“ thousands of happy mothers in all succeeding
ages, while caressing their infant daughters, will
bless the name of Duncan.”
He predicts that the introduction of infantry
and artillery into the Mahratta armies will be
their ruin.
The English in Bombay held slaves, but their
lot was very different to their African brethren in
the West Indies. Here they were sometimes
confidential servants, and their hardest task-
masters were the Portuguese. When down the
coast he bought for Rs. 20 a boy and a girl as a
present for an English lady in Bombay.
Of Forbes it may be said—
“’Twas thine with daring wing and eagle eye to
pierce Antiquity’s profoundest gloom,” so he deals
largely in pictorial representations and descriptions
of Elephanta, &c. Bombay without Elephanta
would be Egypt without the Pyramids.
He lavishes pen and pencil also on the Kanheri
Caves, and the less known ones at Mhar resusci-
tated by Burgess.
At Ahmedabad he is in an ecstasy, and has
handed us down the only picture that exists of
JAMES FORBES. 507
the Shaking Minarets, more wonderful than the
Leaming Towers of Pisa.
Everybody has been at Sarkej, six miles from
Ahmedabad, but everybody does not know Sarkej
is a facsimile of the great Temple of Mecca.
This, however, can easily be verified by a refer-
ence to Carsten Niebuhr's Arabie, where there
is an engraving of the latter. Some of our musi-
eal readers will be able to judge of Forbes’s ear
for music from the following. As he excepts Eng-
hish melodies, we presume he intends the remark as
a compliment to Scotland and the adjacent island.
“Many of the Hindoo melodies possess the
plaintive simplicity of the Scotch and Irish ; and
others, a wild originality pleasing beyond de-
scription.”
“Early rising, the cold bath, a morning walk,
temperate meals, an evening ride, and retiring
soon to rest, are the best rules for preserving life
in India.” So he found them, and lived to the
age of seventy.
THE ORIENTAL MEMOIRS.
It is now seventy years since the last sentence
of the Oriental Memoirs was penned, and the
book continues to be prized by all men and
women who take an intelligent interest in
508 BOOK OF BOMBAY."
the history of Bombay. But in truth the
reading of it is an oriental reverie, and were
it not for its great size it would have more
readers. Forbes must have known the diffi-
culty of grappling with a thick quarto in the
heat of India. Why did he not then suit the
specific gravity of his book to the physical capa-
city of his probable readers ? At the best, man
in India is an inert animal, and these big books
instead of being a feast of reason and a flow of
soul are very much of the latter. Nevertheless
he has made these eighteen years, 1766-84, all his
own. No man shall usurp dominion over him dur-
ing this portion of time. Crommelin and Hodges
are forgotten, but Forbes is remembered. He was
not an old fogy in Bombay, as he left it at the
age of 35. His flabby face and double chin may
provoke comment; but taking him all in all, we
can say to ourselves what Burns said of another-
“If honest worth to heaven rise
Ye'll mend, or ye win near him.”
THE APOSTLE.
Layman as he was, he holds a place in the his-
tory of evangelisation in Western India. Before
Chaplain Gray, the friend of Burns and the tutor
of his children, died at Bhooj (1830), and half a
century before Dr. Wilson landed in India, this
JAMES FOR BES. 509
veiled prophet, Yacoob Forbes, was scattering
the seeds of what Bhau Dajee called the religion
of the Prince of Peace and Love, among dusky
people under the palm and the banyan-tree. He
did not leave his religion at the Cape and find a
new one in the wilds of Guzerat. No residence
alone for years among people worshipping strange
gods cajoled him out of his ancient faith, or made
him indifferent to the truths of his holy religion.
An admirable man. By no means proud or
arrogant, for he who was the friend of Horne
Bishop of Norwich and had been the guest at
Daylesford of Warren Hastings, did not disdain
to receive the consolations of religion at the
death-bed of, and from the lips of, a domestic
servant, and he was not ashamed to put it in
print that he had done so.
He was, he tells us, four years without (and he
did not undervalue them) religious services. Reli-
gious services ! His banyan-tree
“So like a temple did it seem that there
A pious heart's first impulse would be prayer;
And of his chamber at Dhuboy might be said—
“This is the gate of God, by it
The just shall enter in :
Thee will I praise, for thou me heard'st,
And hast my safety been l’”
So every new experience and deliverance was
510 BOOK OF BOM BAY.
to him an Ebenezer, and he had, like most men
in India, some wonderful escapes. He has left
us the picture of a cobra, painted by himself.
He had, while doing so, been handling it fami-
liarly, believing its fangs had been extracted.
Next morning it sprang at the throat of a native
woman, and she died in half an hour. When
Dhuboy was handed over to the Mahrattas, he
left it an hour sooner than he had intended.
His followers on the road coming after him
were attacked by a body of 300 Gracias, who
demanded the Sahib, killing a cavalry officer and
his Parsee butler, and wounding many others.
Had he been an hour later he would have
been caught in the vortex. So every new abode
was to Forbes a Bethel or temple of the living
God.
“Where’er they seek thee, thou art found,
And every place is hallowed ground.”
HIS ATTACHMENT TO BOMBAY.
It is strange how life in India warps itself in-
sensibly round the lives and habits of men. The
man who asked after dinner, in Portsmouth, for
the road to the Apollo Bunder was drunk. But
the Duke of Wellington was perfectly sober to the
end of his life, when he preferred the charpoy
JAMES FORBES. 511
or camp-bed, with which his early Indian
career had made him familiar, to the four-posters
or masses of Elizabethan upholstery. And so, in
like manner, when all that this world holds was
fading away from the eyes of Sir Charles Napier,
the hero of Meeanee, the windows of a square
apartment in England were opened to the four
winds of heaven, so that he might realise the
old Indian bungalow. His son-in-law laid the
British flag on him; and all was over.
But each in his own way. One man decks
his abode at home with the trophies of the Indian
chase ; another fills his library with the black-
wood of Bombay; and a third surrounds his
drawing-room with Deccan scenes, or sunny
views of Matheran in some grey metropolis of
the North. Even a sailor has been known to
take home with him an Indian crow. In the
wilds of Perthshire there remains the ruins of an
Indian bungalow. The mouldering rooms are
not now as they stood “ near eighty years
ago.”
The story goes that its owner was much imbued
with life in Western India, that nothing would
satisfy him but broad verandahs, venetians, and
all that sort of thing. We need not tell our
512 BOOK OI! BOMBAY.
readers that in Scotland, in November, the end
of these things is death.
The doctor was sent for to the nearest country
town, and found our Anglo-Indian after chota-
hazri, with his teeth chattering, under a mosquito
curtain, and the wind off Ben Macdhui howling
around his charpoy. The man was saved by the
skin of his teeth, but his will was not broken.
His friends advised him to leave at once for
Occidental India and take his Portuguese boy
with him, which he did, to spend the remainder
of his days there.
HOME.
Few men who have spent a considerable
portion of their life in India leave it without
regret of some kind or other. It was so with
James Forbes. With him the best view of
Bombay was not from the deck of the outgoing
ship. A crowd of associations rushed upon him,
and he tried to console himself with the fact that
the Bombay which he had known in his early
days was not the Bombay of 1784. But he was
very glad to get home. He ordered supper, but
like people, as we have heard, who receive news
of a great or sudden acquisition of fortune, he
could not eat. Then he went to bed and could
JAMES FOR BES. 513
mot sleep a wink, the greenest land on earth, and
its hawthorn hedges, was too much for him.
When he left Bombay he took a good slice of it
with him, we do not mean in the matter of loaves
and fishes, though in this he was well enough.
But Stanmore Hill and its surroundings, where
he settled down, must have looked for all the
world like a bit cut out of Bombay or Guzerat.
The love of Bombay with James Forbes
amounted to a ruling passion, and he did all he
could to foster it by the writing and publication
of these bulky Memoirs. Dhuboy, near Baroda,
where he spent so many years, haunted him
pleasantly to his dying day ; and no wonder, for
it seems a bonnie place, and often in his day
dreams, in the glades of merrie England, he would
hear the old Indian sounds, the bray of the camel,
the Moslem call to prayer from the minaret, or
the plaintive refrain of women grinding at the
mill, coming as a distant lullaby from the land
that was afar off. By night, amid the silence of
the Stanmore woods, the nightingale awakened
him, but it was only to hear the warblings of the
bulbul among the palm groves on Cumballa Hill;
and by day when he was seated in his con-
servatory in a mimic jungle of babul or camel
thorn, the blackbird hopping among his goose-
65
514 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
berry bushes, was to him only a mind—with
yellow legs—and nothing more.
As Livingstone wrote in 1869:
“I shall look into your faces,
And listen to what you say,
And be often very near you
When you think I’m far away.”
So was Forbes at home to the men and things
he had left behind him in Western India.
It was in these grounds that he erected an
octagon building, which eight groups of sculp-
ture adormed; these he brought from the Gate
of Diamonds at Dhuboy. It was situated on the
margin of a lake covered profusely with the nym-
phea lotus, to remind him of the tanks of Guze-
rat. In his conservatory he beheld the tamarind,
custardapple, cotton, ginger, turmeric, and
coffee-plants. There he gathered ripe guavas
from a tree entwined by the crimson ipomea and
sacred tulsi. He did not succeed in producing
fruit on the mango-tree, though this had been
done by the Duke of Northumberland.
Even in that picture which was painted of him
at the age of sixty-two and which Mrs. Oliphant
tells us still hangs in the library of the Countess
Montalambert in France, he is represented sit-
ting under the shade of a banyan-tree, among
JAMES FOR BES. 515
Trimurti and his Indian idols; the long hanging
tendrils coming down and forming a kind of
canopy over his head. India was all to him and
he was nothing without India. So when he went
home he took his pet sarus with him, as he, no
doubt, took his hookah. Orme was his Gibbon,
and for him Fryer was Herodotus, the father of
Indian history. His two articles of belief were
Bombay and the Bible. Out of the one he
fashioned a competence for this world, and from
the other he obtained an all-sufficiency for the
world to come.
“Sought in one book his troubled mind to rest,
And rightly deemed the book of God the best.”
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.
FORBES'S VIEW FROM MALABAR HILL.
It has been suggested to us, that this view
has not been taken from Malabar Hill, properly
so called, but from Cumballa Hill at a point
near the bungalow occupied by Mr. Perosha M.
Mehta, or where the road, as you ascend, turns
off at a right angle. A friend has taken the
trouble to verify all this, and we accept his in-
terpretation with thanks. He remarks justly, that
there is no place on the left of the road as you
516 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
now ascend Malabar Hill, where a tank could be
placed, and that the one in this view is the Gowalla
Tank, and that the road between it and the
spectator is the Cumballa Hill road. The posi-
tion of the Tower of Silence in the picture cor-
responds with this point of view. The Malabar
Hill road, as a carriage road, was not in existence
in 1771, and what we call Cumballa Hill doubt-
less in these days came under the general name
of Malabar Hill. All this may seem a very small
matter, but it is not a small matter in the
ancient topography of Bombay. The riddle is now
solved, for the houses we see in the picture are
not on Malabar Hill at all, and where, our readers
will understand, there were no bungalows at
this early period, but upon the margin of the
Gowalla Tank.
“Tankerville,” which he mentions, doubtless
was one of them. *
Another, to which he alludes, the “ Retreat,”
stood upon the Breach Candy sea margin.
We hope that this construction of Forbes’s
picture will commend itself to all who find
pleasure in the contemplation of it. It was done
by his own hand, and deserves a little attention.
--~&Rſ5SE- -
D R. WILSON.
519
CHAPTER XXI.
DR. WILSON.
India has not seen an abler or wiser friend and bene-
factor, or Christianity itself a more loving and judicious
representative.—Dr. Bhaw Daji’s speech in Town Hall,
1869.
SEVEN years have passed away since the death
of Dr. Wilson. That space has been crowded
with stirring events, but they have not dimmed
his memory. He now stands far away from us,
like a lonely hill. The light is clearer on it
after sunset, and its boundaries well defined. We
can see that the shadows are softened, the in-
equalities smoothed down, and the mists having
cleared away, the bulk, proportion, and contour
lie before us. We cannot know him better or
love him better, but we may correct our views or
sober our judgment, and so command a better
520 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
observation than when he was alive; for dis-
tance not only lends enchantment to the view,
but sometimes contributes accuracy to the
vision.
This intervening space has added nothing to
his story ; for not one item cropped up after Dr.
Wilson’s death that we did not know during his
life. Had it been otherwise, the vultures of
Biography would soon have been down upon him,
and had he illused his wife or denied the faith,
we would soon have heard of it.
But he was too transparent for this sort of
thing ; his character was like his own bungalow,
char durwaza cola, open to the four winds of
heaven. We may also look forward and form a
kind of judgment how Time, that great arbiter,
is likely to deal with him, and whether the repu-
tation he earned during his life is going to be
confirmed by posterity, or fade away like so
many indistinct Indian reputations. We hear of
jubilee missionary meetings at which his name is
not mentioned, we see in the libraries dust lying
thick on his book upon Caste, while his magnum
opus, “The Lands of the Bible,” has long ago
been superseded by “Palestine Exploration.”
But with Galileo we cry, Il muove I—still it
moves. Labour so continuous and unflagging,
DR. WILSON. 521
and prosecuted with faculties unimpaired, from
the day he read his first thesis to that in which
his sun set
“Not, as in northern lands, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light,”
makes us believe that as he left his mark on the
age in which he lived, so his works will follow
him to future generations. There is one guaran-
tee that Dr. Wilson's name will not readily
perish. It is enshrined in the hearts of the
people. Specially is it a heritage of the sons and
daughters of our schools and colleges, who will
not willingly let it die. It rests, therefore, on a
sure foundation ; for he gave himself and all that
he had to ameliorate the condition of the men
and women of India. And in this respect he was
unlike any one of the conspicuous men who have
added to the renown of our Bombay common-
wealth ; for the greatest of them all were birds of
passage, here to-day, there to-morrow.
John Wilson was a monument of Scotch educa-
tion. That system owes its origin to John Knox
in the sixteenth century. It still exists in the
School Board, modified to meet the wants of the
age ; but there is nothing special about it to any
age or country, for you may assert, without fear
of contradiction, that it is the duty of the State
66
522 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
to place education within the reach of all. He
was gifted by nature with uncommon powers of
memory, indeed it was averred by some that this
was his strong forte, and that herein lay all the
difference between him and other men, at all
events a sine qua non for the linguist. But he
had also uncommon powers of observation and
apprehension. “I looked, but did not see,”
was not his motto ; rather, like White of Sel-
borne, the smallest fact did not escape his
observation. To this was added intense powers
of application, for he often sat up whole mights,
until the spear-like shafts of the Eastern sun
smote him at dawn of day. He took twice the
work out of the twenty-four hours that did most
men, and he soon out-distanced all competitors.
And so he toiled on until on the long hill up to
Mahableshwur which seems to have no ending,
he met the presage that his work was done. It
was in vain that Sir Bartle Frere came to him and
asked him to accept from the Prince of Wales
his deepest sympathy and regard.
He only uttered, “Vain is the help of man.”
Dean Swift says of somebody, “He had been a
screen between me and death.” That screen
was now to be taken away.
His sermons by most men were considered
DR, WILSON. 523
prolix; the heat and languour of the Indian
climate make people intolerant of what would
be not merely endurable, but delectable, in a
northern latitude ; but we can vouch from our
own experience that his most public utterances—
for example, his lectures on the Eastern Churches
in the Music Hall of Edinburgh in 1844, his
addresses as Moderator of the Free Church
in 1870, and his prelections as Vice-Chancellor
of the Bombay University, were spoken to at-
tentive and crowded audiences, and that there
was no weariness of the flesh while he poured
forth in all their exuberance the richest stores
of Eastern learning. His prayers were models
of devotional propriety, couched in language full
of Hebrew diction worthy of Carstairs and the
days of old, a phraseology which now seems
antique in these times of fervid Evangelicalism;
and though he scorned the theology of Blair
and Robertson, he had caught something of their
stateliness, for he had sat at the feet of the
men who were their friends or pupils. One of
his professors had been tutor to a Scots noble-
man, as he was wont to relate, and in his travels
found himself at Lausanne. When there he
called on Gibbon, and in conversation im-
prudently deplored the infidelity of the modern
524. IBOOK OF BOMBAY.
historians—which was, no doubt, true enough ;
but time and place for everything. Gibbon
coloured, walked to his book-case, and throwing
a volume on the table exclaimed, “Do you call
that the work of an infidel ?” It was Robertson’s
History of America.
It would be a lamentable exhibition of the
little we had profited by the friendship with which
Dr. Wilson honoured us, if we attempted any ama-
lysis, far less an estimate, of his scholarship and
labours in the wide field of Oriental research. A
jury empanelled from the most eminent Orien-
talists in Europe would alone suffice for the task.
But we may be permitted to say, while skimming
thus on the surface, that the gifts of one
were the inheritance of many, and that he
scattered broadcast on the earth, among his
fellow-men of every race, the seeds which God
and his own right arm had placed in his
disposal. It was well known to Dr. Wilson’s
friends that shortly before his death he had ex-
pressed a desire to live. It was decreed other-
wise, and he was quite resigned. But in truth
there was much in his position to make life
attractive to him. His books, his coins, his
troops of friends, his correspondence, the view he
had from his house, and, above all, the holy work
D.R., WILSON. 525
in which he was engaged, with the many schemes
incidental to it, left no idle moments.
Bombay was his home, and it is a mistake to
imagine with the men of Edinburgh that Dr. Wil-
son was making a great sacrifice when he came
out for the last time. The bitterness of expatria-
tion, if he ever felt it, was all past when he first
laid down his life and work for India ; and he
came out to end his days where he had spent the
most of his life in congenial work. It is true he
had his trials, but he bore them with fortitude
and equanimity. His righteous soul must have
been vexed from day to day by protégés who not
only fell short of what he expected, but dis-
appointed and absolutely cheated him, and con-
verted his philanthropy in many instances into a
barren conquest. The number of subjects un-
worthy of his charity and righteous designs was
known only to himself, for no murmur escaped his
lips. Sometimes, also, his motives were misinter-
preted and his acts misunderstood, but he outlived
them all. It was not without reason that his
hand shook in his later years as if with incipient
paralysis, for he passed through some fiery
trials.
Two of his first wife's sisters were accidentally
drowned, a third was buried at sea. His wife
526 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
also died—a few years only in India, his memoir
of whom was a great favourite of the ladies of a
past generation. And now came his crowning
act of self-denial, when he gave up his State
emoluments and withdrew from the Church of
Scotland, casting himself on the bounty of the
Scotch people. The deed of demission of the
Free Church rang throughout Europe, forty
years ago, but the sacrifice was greater, at all
events the courage which dictated the sacrifice
was greater, when men who were placed as
Dr. Wilson was placed among races of alien
religions threw away their means of subsistence.
It might be supposed that having forfeited State
support, he would forfeit the friendship of the
Governors of India. But he did not do so, for
Governor after Governor and Viceroy after
Viceroy paid him court, and he was seen at mid-
night in the autumn of 1857 walking unprotected
through streets suspected of hatching rebellion,
when all men were quaking, except perhaps Lord
Elphinstone, Forjet, and himself, in the blank
amazement of a great fear. And thus it was
when any treasonable document required to be
deciphered, when a new heir was wanted to the
gaddee in Baroda or an Abyssinian expedition
projected, Dr. Wilson was called in by Govern-
D.R. WILSON. 527
ment, for even Sir Robert Napier found some-
thing to interest him about Magdala ere he
dreamed that this “awful mouthful of a
word,” as he expressed it in after years
would become the badge of his distinguished
name. We cannot suppose that any man
in our generation will take up the position of
Dr. Wilson. It was unique in its duration, and
unique in this—that he had piled up a great
heap of multifarious knowledge on Western
India subjects such as probably few men will
ever do again. This knowledge he did not keep
for himself, but scattered wherever and when-
ever opportunity offered; and his intellectual
capital was in ready money. To every question
of “Do you know P’’ he had but one answer,
“Yes.” And forth came the gushing well-spring
to refresh the thirsty soul. That the man who
on three several occasions, delivering his blows
one after the other in quick succession, brought
down his sledge-hammer on Hinduism, Mahom-
medanism, and Zoroastrianism should have made
friends among and been courted by the leading
representatives of them all, is the most brilliant
spectacle that has ever been offered to the world
of the missionary in heathen lands. And it is a
lesson that need never grow old, for grace, human
528 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
and divine, is always worth the possessing ; and
he was endowed with both to a very large extent.
To many people who did not know him, or
knew him but little, Dr. Wilson appeared a
bundle of contradictions. To one he was garru-
lous, to another taciturn, to another he talked of
big friends and acquaintances. He was a minister
of religion, and yet he refused to be called “the
Reverend.” He was a voluntary in practice,
but in theory for a Church established by law.
He liked a good “hard psalm,” but he was very
fond of Sir Robert Grant’s hymns, which all
Bombay men are glad to see have found a place
in Palmer's Book of Praise. He managed to
pull well, with his own denomination, though,
perhaps, an exception may be found to this, as
also with other denominations of Christians; and
it is sometimes more difficult to do this than to
take common ground of action in philanthropic
schemes with the disciples of the old creeds of
India. He asked the Bishop of Bombay to join
the Bible Society, which the Bishop declined to
do. But he wrote him on his death-bed a letter
which leaves nothing to be desired, and still
sheds its fragrance over the grave of this good
man as he sleeps under the shadow of the great
Rock of Weem. As a student he had seen Sir
IDR. WILSON. 529
Walter Scott walking, or rather limping, on the
streets of Edinburgh, yet he cared nothing for
the Waverley Novels.
Of course, everybody knew that he abjured in-
strumental music in church, and thought a ser-
mon ought to be at least half an hour in length.
But it is not so well known, and will surprise
many to learn, that Dr. Wilson was a man of
humour. He had not the bonhomie of Norman
Macleod nor the incisive wit and satirical jest of
Archdeacon Jeffreys, who was a kind of Bom-
bay Sydney Smith, though he delighted to
relate the latter’s brusque reply to the
lady who asked if there was any choice of
climate in this Presidency. “Yes,’” said he,
“ you may be stewed in Bombay, or grilled in
the Deccan.” There’s a stame in my fit, my
lord” tickled, we had almost said put many a
THERE'S A STANE IN MY FIT, MY LORD.
* Jemmy, a half-witted body, had long harboured a dislike
to the steward on the property, which he paid off in the following
manner :—Lord Lauderdale and Sir Anthony used to take him
out shooting ; and one day Lord Maitland (he was then) on
having to cross the Leader Said, “Now, Jemmy, you will carry
me through the water ’’—which Jemmy duly did. Bowmaker,
JLord Lauderdale's steward, who was shooting with them, said,
“Now, Jommy, you must carry me over.” “Vera weel,” said
Jemmy. He took the steward on his back, and when he had
carried him half way across the river he dropped him quietly
into the water.—DEAN RAMSAY.
The other story was that Jemmy, with his lordship on his back,
halted in the middle of the stream and , pulling up his leg,
“There's a stane,” &c. His lordship offered him a six-pence if
Jemmy would land him on the opposite bank. “Na,” said
Jemmy, “the factor has given me a half-crown to let ye doon
in the water.”
67
530 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
mess in a roar twenty years before the first edi-
tion of Dean Ramsay saw the light, and as it
hails from Lauder, is, no doubt, the Doctor’s
own story. But as he got older he became more
chary of his best, and even his old friend, Colonel
Day, could not extort from him more than one
recherché tit-bit of Robin Gray, Malcolm’s pro-
tégé, and whilom Police Magistrate of Bombay.
He sometimes tickled his audience in, the Town
Hall with a touch of sly humour, as, for instance,
speaking in succession to Mr. (now Sir William)
Wedderburn, he alluded to his grandfather’s
career in Guzerat, and said he had a most exact
knowledge of the science of finance and figures,
men of this kind being a great desideratum just
at present. It so happened the news had just
arrived of some arithmetical miscalculation in
Budget or other returns not uncommon in
Calcutta, adding, as it were, the “ year of our
Lord ” to the pounds column” ; and the re-
mark was received with great laughter.
John Smith, of Smith, Fleming and Co., ac-
companied him in 1843 throughout his long
YEAR OF OUR LORD IN TIIE POUNDS COLUMN.
* A successful merchant in the north having at the end of the
year entrusted his assistant to balance his books, was so over-
§§ at the result When announced to him, that he summoned
is friends and neighbours and held a gaudeamus in celebration
thereof. Next, morning he discovered that, his profits had been
SWelled out by an error of £1860.” My certe, &c. &c.
DR. WILSON. 531
wanderings in the Sinai Peninsula and Syria, but
one of his fastest friends, and one for whom he
also entertained the greatest respect, was David
M’Culloch. He was a man for whom John
Connon had an unbounded admiration, and Sir
Erskine Perry, addressing a jury, uttered this
eulogium from the judgment seat, “We all know
and respect David M’Culloch.” David was the
scion of a small, but ancient, estate which had
been held in Galloway by the M’Cullochs of
Ardwell for generations. Indeed, we believe that
for a very short time before his death he was
actually “laird” himself, though he never entered
upon possession. He died in 1858, and was
buried in the Scotch burying-ground, where his
tomb may be seen to this day. He was very
charitable ; among other benefactions he gave
Rs. 30,000 to the building fund of the Free
Church, and being a bachelor and a man of
means, had much money to dispose of in this
way, and the will to do it.
Our readers will recollect a scene in the closing
days of the poet Burns, and which is given by
most of his biographers. The poet was then in
low water in Dumfries, say in 1792, when
M’Culloch, of Ardwell, who knew him well, re-
cognised him sauntering on the shady side of
532 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
Queensberry-square, and rallied him to go and
join the general throng on the other side of the
street, who were then discussing a county ball to
be given that evening in Dumfries. The poet
repeated the verse of a ballad, a melancholy re-
frain, indicating that his dancing days were over.
This friend of Burns was the father of David
M’Culloch. David, in Bombay, lived what seems
a gloomy and solitary life. He kept geese and
canary birds, and was careless about his dress,
and to his other eccentricities added the harmless
one of taking one long walk in the year. The
place was Tanna and back, and the day he chose
for this was New Year's Day, the coolest time of
our Bombay season.
It was on one of these excursions that Dr. and
Mrs. Wilson met David in Tanna, and while there
accompanied them to a silk manufactory, for
which, in mediaeval times, Tanna was so famous.
While there Mrs. Wilson gently reminded Mr.
M’Culloch, on looking over the silks, that he
might profit by his opportunity and invest in a silk
dress, which he could present to the lady highest
in his estimation. David yielded—consented also
to give up the latter half of his walk, and to
accompany them in their carriage to Bombay.
They saw nothing of David for several weeks, but
DR. WILSON. 533
one evening on coming in from their drive they
observed a bulky parcel on the lobby table. It
was addressed “To Mrs. Wilson, with D. M’Cul-
loch’s best compliments.”
On another occasion the Doctor met David
coming through the Bombay Green, carrying
with him a small spade and a dead canary bird in
a paper bag. In answer to the Doctor's inquiry
as to where he was going, he told him he was
going to dig a grave and bury his pet bird. Dr.
Wilson must have smiled an incredulous smile,
as David quickly added, “ May be that wee bird
will be the first to welcome me into Paradise.”
Dr. Wilson was early enough in India to know
Gray, a missionary of the Church of England,
buried at Bhooj, and we think he was content to
finish that translation of the new Testament into
Mahratta which Gray begun. Gray was no mean
poet, for he is commemorated by Hogg in the
“ Queen’s Wake.”
He had been the friend of Burns and the tutor
of his children, and his letters furnish the most
valuable account we possess of Burns’ family life
while he dwelt in the three-storeyed house in
Bank-street, Dumfries. By the time Wilson
knew him Gray had worn away the vain asperi-
ties of youth, and Wilson has placed on record
534 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
that he was not only a man of talent, but a good
man. This is one link that connects Burns with
India, but there are others which we may state
without travelling much from our subject. The
first statue, perhaps, that was ever erected of
Burns is in the National Gallery of Edinburgh,
and bears on its pedestal that the movement
which ended in its erection was initiated by a
group of Bombay merchants. A grandchild of
the poet Burns lies buried at Kaladgi, and the
wife of one of the poet’s sons at Jhansi, facts
recorded on the Burns’ Mausoleum in Dumfries.
It would be vain to cite any man in Western
India so accomplished all round as Dr. Wilson.
Other men may be found more skilled in special
branches of knowledge, but none of such univer-
sal attainments. Men were attracted to him like
steel filings to a magnet ; but whatever the
motive that brought them to his presence, each
went his way, warmed and filled with the bread
that does not perish in the using. He had no
favourite race, and he rose to the height of his
great vocation when he asserted that as regards
aptitude of receiving information there was no
difference between the Hindoo, the Parsee, and
the Moslem ; that all were the same in this
respect, Aryan and non-Aryan, Jew and Greek,
DR. WILSON.e. 535
bond or free. Though he was among the first to
cast in his lot with the Free Church, he consider-
ed it no part of his duty to anathematise the
State Churches of Great Britain, and though he
was not called upon to enter the vexed sea of
politics, the British name and authority in India
had no more ardent, enlightened, or judicious
supporter than Dr. Wilson.
When Lord Mayo laid the foundation-stone of
the University, the Governor of the day, Sir Sey-
mour Fitzgerald, uttered these words: “There
is a name on that stone, that of John Wilson.
That name will endure long after all memory of
my transitory dominion has passed away ”—words
which reflect as much honour on the speaker as
they do upon the subject of his eulogium. We
have spoken of his versatility. To one friend he
would discourse on the Arsacidae, and show him
on the Parthian coin the effigy of the man who
defeated Crassus ; to another he would talk of
the botany of Arabia, and assert that it had made
little or no progress since Forskal’s time ; to a
third, the leading physician of the day, who in
describing the ailment of a common friend had
hazarded the remark that he could proceed
no further without using technical language,
“You need not fear,” said the white Brahmin.
536 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
“I spent two years at the medical classes.” A
snake would be killed ; the name and qualities
were soon forthcoming ; and this would give
occasion for him to dilate on the wonderful con-
centric rings in the skeleton, to be produced by
boiling it down (destroy the chatty afterwards).
And he added, “Some of the aborigines would
consider this a bonne bouche.”
Or David Livingstone would drop in. “Were
I ten years younger I would go with you to
Africa and see the Fountains of the Sun.” And
he would have done it, for he was a great and an
unwearying pedestrian,
“From Ahmed's Moslem fames and regal bowers,
To towns far distant on Konkan shores.”
But he had drunk of another fountain. The
day he received a letter from him by the hands
of Stanley was a memorable one. Five years
had passed away. And it was a picture to see
the old man reading over the faded manuscript,
written on thick foolscap with a reed, in which
he denounced some of the Nassick boys as com-
mitting every crime under heaven. “Remember
me to dear Mrs. Wilson,” he faltered out, the
tears dropping from his eyes. Mrs. Wilson had
been dead for years.
, D.R., WILSON. 537
It has been said that Dr. Wilson had no imagi-
nation. The first Mrs. Wilson had. She was a
woman whose nerves were finely strung, and
sometimes burst into song, and her gifted son,
Andrew Wilson, inherited all her genius in this
respect. He it was who ten years ago wrote the
“Songs after Sunset ’’:
“Again the scene shifts. Ten years hence I see
A city grand and pleasant to the eye,
Bombay, as it will doubtless one day be
Ereed from caste prejudice and rivalry;
Broad roads to view, and noble buildings fair,
Green shaded walks beneath umbrageous trees,
With fountains playing 'neath the sunny blue,
Tempered and softened by a cool sea-breeze.”
Dr. Wilson lived more than forty years in
India. “Can a European live as long here as at
home f" “ Yes,” he would reply, and after a
pause: “I would advise him to go out of Bom-
bay two months every year.” And so he gene-
rally contrived to do, and in early life hardened
his frame by pedestrian excursions and seasons
of innocent relaxation. He was always a wel-
come guest, and he never could have obtained
the reputation he had in Bombay, even, with all
his gifts, unless he had had a most winning and
gracious presence. He had wonderful tact in
adapting himself to the age, sex, or position of
68
538 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
a chance companion. It was all the same,
Viceroy or the last arrival beginning a Govern-
mental or mercantile career.
Though imbued as few other men have been
with the dignity and responsibility of his office,
he was able to extract such materials aslightened
for himself and others the burden and heat of
the day, and cheered them on in the journey of
life. He served God with his mirth as much as
some men do by their sadness. It was averred
that his auditors required to be good listeners or
they felt a sense of weariness, but that was their
affair, and possibly due to the lateness of the
hour, or the heat of the climate, neither of
which tended much to allay the vigour of his
spirits. There is a tradition founded on fact that
Lord Magdalla actually fell asleep all unob-
served by his guest who sat beside him, and to
the great amusement of the party, who were
much profited and instructed by the largeness
of the discourse. He lived in Spartan simplicity,
never drove in anything but a one-horse
shigram, and a bottle of cold tea was his meri-
dian. Not that he abjured drink; when he
returned from the ovation given to him in the
Town Hall by the Governor and his fellow-citi-
zens, he drank of the wine that maketh glad the
D.R., WILSON. 539
heart of man, and rose like a giant refreshed.
Not without a touch of gay humour was Sir
Seymour Fitzgerald’s remark, looking at the
figure of Wilson, whose coat had been exquisitely
cut in bas relief on the silver salver presented to
him. “Tell him,” said he, “with my compli-
ments, that Terry has made the best coat I ever
saw him wear.” That message, we need scarcely
add, was not delivered.
He was very proud of his membership of the
Royal Society. Consciously or unconsciously he
wrote for posterity, and, like Mackintosh and
Mountstuart Elphinstone, from habits of deep
thought and close observation, and making it
his study to note dates and references with
accuracy, his works will ever reward the student
of India’s religions and history.
His memory remained intact. A day or two
before he died a friend repeated the line—
They also Serve who stand and wait ;
and added, “ Cowper ?” “ Milton—on his blind-
ness,” was the quick reply. And he could be
solemn enough on occasion. One racked by pain
and fever, and half demented, told him that
for three days and nights he had been so bad that
540 IBOOK OF BOMBAY.
he could neither read his Bible nor say his
prayers. “HE knows that,” pointing with his
finger to the sky. *
It must be remembered that, his attainments
and the rewards which accompanied them, how-
ever lofty in themselves and worthy of human
ambition, did not bring Dr. Wilson to India.
They were means to an end. That end was the
salvation of India, a word much abused in recent
times. It was no word with a vague meaning to
T}r. Wilson. The salvation of India meant to
him security of life and property to the natives
thereof in this world, and the hope of an immor-
tality in the next. What had Dr. Wilson to do
with life and property in India 2 some may say.
We reply that the effort of his life was to com-
plete the work commenced and carried on by
Tuncan and Walker for the abolition of infan-
ticide. Had that nothing to do with the pre-
servation of life 2 And everything he wrote was
in the interest of good government, which, if
it means anything at all, means protection, to
life and property.
What he began, he strove to complete, for he
could not rest contented until the coin was
deciphered, the flower classified, or the word
DR. WILSON. 541
harked back to its parent root. But some things
he finished, and some things he could not finish;
and as the end drew near he bewailed that his
performances had borne such a feeble proportion
to the magnitude of his conceptions. Had
John Wilson lived a hundred years it would
have been all the same. There would still be
absurdities in men and things to demolish,
something to add to his book on Caste, or some
new conquest to effect in the wide field he had
mapped out for himself. He would still be get-
ting himself stung by bees in the Konkan, or
poring over the rocks of Girnar, or dipping into
Joseph’s well for another lost Bible, or holding
confabulations over the mysteries of religion
with a new generation of Jejeebhoys or Sassoons,
or interrogating another Rabbi Duncan at
Pesth, until Duncan was forced to exclaim with
Bathsheba that half even of the wisdom of this
modern Solomon had not been told him.
But not until the rocks of Petra and Asoka
had yielded up to him their last lithographic
secret, not until John Knox's great ideal was
realised in India, not until the gospel had been
preached to every creature, would he have seen
of the travail of his soul and been satisfied.
For him there was always something to do or
542 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
suffer, or something to complete, even on that
day when he bid adieu for the last time to that
fair scene from the Cliff, over which the eye
of the missionary and philanthropist had so
often wandered, those boundless fields consecrat-
ed to him for evermore.
BOMBAY DIRECTORY-1792.
545
CHAPTER XXII.
BOMBAY DIRECTORY-1792.
THE HONORABLE MAYOR'S COURT.
The Worshipful P. C. BRUCE, Esq., Mayor.
ALDERMEN.
ALEX. ADAMSON, Esq., Senior Alderman.
Robert Kitson, Esq. John De Panthieu, Esq.
John Forbes, Esq. George Stevenson, Esq.
James Tate, Esq. Charles Elphinstone, Esq.
James Tod, Esq.
George Simson, Sheriff.
Philip Samuel Maisler, Registrar.
Augustus William Handley, Ea'aminer.
Henry Fawcett, Accowntant General.
ATTORNIES.
Henry Forrester Constable. | Phinehas Hall.
William Paddock. Stephen Cassan.
William White. Edward Popham.
Bryt. Brooksbank. William Ashburner.
James Anderson.
THE HONORABLE COURT OF APPEALS.
Major General ROBERT ABERCOMBY.
George Dick, Esq. William Lewis, Esq.
Daniel Crokatt, Esq. John Morris, Registrar.
69
546 BOOK OF
BOMBAY,
INSURANCE SOCIETY.
Mr. Forbes. Mr. Hadow.
,, Bruce. ,, D. Scott.
,, Ashburner. ,, J. Ferguson.
,, Henshaw. ,, Sir F. Gordon, Bart.
,, Rivett. ,, EI. Trail.
,, A damson. ,, T. Graham.
,, Constable. ,, J. Griffith.
,, Tate. ,, J. Ried.
,, Nesbitt. ,, Dady Nasservanjee.
,, De Souza. ,, S. C. Semoy.
,, L. B. De Souza. ,, N. Goolabdass.
,, Simson. ,, N. Manockjee.
,, Fawcett. ,, P. Bomanjee.
,, Stevens. ,, F. Nanabhoy.
LIST OF MERCHANTS,
- EUROPEAN.
Adamson (Alexander)... Rivett and Wilkinson.
Bruce, Fawcett and Co.
Forbes and Co.
Harding (Joseph).
Souza, Mignel de Leuis.
Tate (James).
Taylor and Agnew.
NATIVE.
Gantoo Caste.
Manordass Rupjee.
Vituldass KeuSSOWram.
Sunkersett Baboolsett.
IPandooset Sewajeesett.
Bhimjeh Ramsett, Tobacco
Farºyle?".
Lallbhoy
Minter.
Sewker Sinoy, Goa. Agent.
Lalla Jairam.
Hurjevan Sirput.
Narondass Nowrotumdass.
Moorlither Sumboo.
Jugjeevun. Anoopdass.
Nawrotumdass Motichund.
Moorlither Pursotum.
Goverdhondass
SHROFFS.
Munordass Duarcadass.
Gopaldass Manordass.
Bengal Shroffs.
Javerchund Atmaram.
Vizbhucan Tapidass.
Pittamber Chutoobhuz.
Balmucan Nursindass.
Goverdhon Jugjivandass.
Ramdass Bhugwandass Na-
rondass.
Hemraze Goccull.
Davaldas Pittamber.
Luckmichund Nanabhoy.
Galla Jewa Moody.
Wirziall Bhugtey.
Natoo Sumboo, Broker.
BOMBAY DIRECTORY-1792. 547
PERSIC CASTE.
Dady Nasservanjee. Dorabjee Furdoonjee.
Hirjee Jeevanjee. Byramjee Motabhoy.
Nasservanjee Manockjee. Burjorjee Dorabjee.
Pallanjee Bomanjee. CHINA AGENTS.
Sorabjee Muncherjee. Rustomjee Dadabhoy
Framjee Nanabhoy. Eduljee Bomanjee.
MUSSULMAN.
Mahomed Soffee. Gassamjee Mottabhoy.
Bhorjee Curimjee. Mullickjee Cassimjee.
ARMENIAN.
Aniet Sarkize. Pogus Satour.
Calslan Satour. Simon Markhar.
Panwass Seemon. Jacob Pedross.
Sahak Moorad.
By the courtesy of the Hon. Sorabjee
Shapoorjee Bengallee we are enabled to present
our readers with all that is contained in the
Bombay Directory of 1792.
The two leaves in this squat volume compared
with the Bombay Directory of to-day bring
forcibly to view the small beginnings of our almost
imperial city. It is a lesson in the history of
great cities, and like the London Directory of
I792 is a very miniature booklet compared with
its Brodignagian successor of 1882. Here, then,
is a list of our prominent citizens, European and
Native, ninety years ago. The European firms
are eight in number. Alexander Adamson, a
name long prominent in Bombay, figures as “the
good Samaritan * in one of Malcolm's Persian
548 Book of BOMBAY.
sketches, and his signature is familiar to us in
letters about ships and shipping in Wellington's
time. He joined the East India Company in
1782, as a Civil Servant, and is now what is
termed a “Junior merchant.” He is styled
“Transfer Master and Assistant to the Trea-
surers.” Bruce, Fawcett and Co. are represented
in 1882 by Messrs. Remington and Co., estab-
lished after 1805. This firm consisted in 1792
of two Civil Servants; Patrick Crawfurd Bruce,
Land Paymaster. He is the Worshipful P. C.
Bruce, Esquire, Mayor, and is a “senior merchant.”
Henry Fawcett is the Accountant General, and
is “a junior merchant.”
We are particular in defining the position of
these gentlemen, so that we may give illustra-
tions of the fact which we pointed out lately,
that prior to 1804, Civil Servants were allowed
to become partners in commercial firms or
Agency Houses, without forfeiting any of the
privileges belonging to the service of the East
India Company.
Of James Tate, Dr. Hové writes in 1787:—
“Mr. Tate in Surat built here last season a ship
which holds 400 bales of cotton, finished it
in five months, sending the cotton to the
Isle of France, whence it is exported to Europe.”
John Forbes in 1792 represents the house of
Messrs. Forbes and Co., and may have been its
BoMBAY DIRECTORY-1792. 549
founder, as the future Sir Charles Forbes was now
only nineteen years of age. Neither John nor
Charles Forbes nor James Tate appear in the list
of Civil Servants.
The Bombay Insurance Company seems to
have offered in 1792 great attractions as an in-
vestment to our eminent citizens. This Company
was unlimited, and lasted under the same name,
we believe, until I868. The subscribed capital
was 15 lakhs, and may be the parent of a Com-
pany of the same name, established in 1870.
William Ashburner joined the East India
Company in 1754, and was in 1792 the oldest
Civil Servant in Bombay. His office was a high
one, the holder of it being styled “Warehouse-
keeper and member of the Committee of
Accounts.” Robert Henshaw, our readers will
recognise the name in Henshaw’s Buildings near
the Bank of Bombay, was called to the chair in
1803 at the great meeting in honour of Arthur
Wellesley. He had been about forty years in
the country, and was undoubtedly the Nestor of
our Society at this time. -
James Tod may have given his name to our
Tod Street. The Armenian houses which were
then so numerous have disappeared, but the
Persic, i.e. Parsee houses, are as strong as ever.
Some of the Hindoo firms may exist to-day, but
we cannot identify any one of them, and such
550 | BOOK OF BOMBAY.
shroffs as we know from independent information
existed before 1792, Jewraz Balloo and others
do not find a place in this Directory.
The wonderful thing is the repetition in our
own age of names so familiar in 1792. The
names are common in the Civil and Military
services of Bombay of Warden, Peil, Ramsden,
Strachey, Ravenscroft, Rivett, Dickenson, Wad-
dington, Michael Kennedy, Foreman, Nugent,
and Sartorius. f
Helenus Scott and Carnegie are among the
Surgeons. And there was one man in the Bom-
bay Harbour in 1792, to wit, the Commander of
His Majesty ship Phoenix, 96 guns, Sir Richard
Strahan, whose fame has been handed down to
future ages in the follówing undying quatrain :—
“The Earl of Chatham with his sword drawn
Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strahan ;
Sir Richard, longing to be at him,
Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham.”
This is no doubt the redoutable hero, so mean-
while we bid good-bye to Bombay and its Hon-
ourable Mayor’s Court and Aldermen all that we
had then in lieu of our High Court of Law and
Justice.
TWELVE VIEWS OF BOMBAY.
553
CHAPTER, XXIII.
TWELVE VIEWS OF BOMBAY.
THE DOCTOR, 1673.
ON the other side of the great inlet to the sea
is a great point abutting against Old Woman’s
Island, and is called Malabar Hill, a rocky,
woody mountain yet sends forth long grass.
A top of the hill is a Parsee Tomb lately raised,
on its declivity towards the sea the remains of a
stupendous Pagoda near a tank of fresh water,
which the Malabars visit it most for.—John Fryer's
New Account of East India and Persia, 1698.
THE PHILOSOPHER, 1804.
The Island of Bombay is beautiful and pic-
turesque; it is of very varied surface, well wooded,
with bold rocks and fine bays, studded with
70
554 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
smaller islands. There is scarcely any part of the
coast of England where the sea has better neigh-
bours of every kind. But what avails all this in
a cursed country where you cannot ramble amid
such scenes, where for the greater part of the day
you are confined to the house.—Life of Sir
James Mackintosh, 1835.
THE TRAVELLER, 1812.
Of all places in the noble range of countries
so happily called the Eastern World, from the
pitch of the Cape to the Islands of Japan, from
Bengal to Batavia, nearly every hole and corner
of which I have visited in the course of my
peregrinations, there are few which can compare
with Bombay. If, indeed, I were consulted by
any one who wished as expeditiously and econo-
mically as possible to see all that was characteristic
of the Oriental world, I would say, without hesita-
tion, “Take a run to Bombay.”—Basil Hall’s
Fragments, 1832.
THE SOLDIER, 1818.
We next went by the road to Malabar Point,
where the Governor has another house, and
about half way to it stopped at the garden.
The view was beautiful, and the road from
it, shaded by innumerable cocoanut trees,
TWELVE VIEWS OF BOMBAY. 555
delightful.—Col. Fitzclarence (brother of Lady
Falkland) Overland Journey to India, 1819.
THE BISHOP, 1825.
Thy Towers, Bombay,
Gleam bright, they say,
Across the dark-blue sea.
—Heber's Journey to Bombay, 1828.
THE GOVERNOR, 1830.
Malabar Hill—to me—a most delightful resi-
dence, almost in the sea. To a man from Bombay,
that noble harbour will suggest a comparison with
that of Corfu, but to complete it, the noble range
of western mountains, should, like those of Albania,
be covered with snow.
In natural beauty the Bay of Naples and its
vicinity are not so striking as either Corfu or
Bombay.—Kaye's Life of Malcolm, 1856.
THE GEOLOGIST, 1855.
The Bombay Islands are, I should say, scarce-
ly surpassed in picturesqueness and beauty
anywhere in the world.— Geological Papers on
Western India.
THE CICERONE, 1859.
The scenery, too, is among the most beautiful in
the world.—Mr. Eastwick in Murray’s Hand
Book, 1859.
556 HOOK OF BOMBAY,
THE PRESBYTER, 1866.
As to the Native Town, no Irish village of the
worst kind has a look of greater poverty, con-
fusion, and utter discomfort. The low huts
covered with palm leaves, the open drains, the
naked children with their naked fathers and
miserable looking mothers, together with the
absence of all attempt to give a decent look to
the houses, present a most remarkable contrast
to the wealth and luxury of the neighbouring
city.—Peeps at the Far East : Norman Macleod,
1871.
THE EDITOR FROM A BALLOON, 1877.
We were soon at an elevation of about six
thousand feet. We were in a dead calm, and
had ample leisure to look out, over Bombay, its
groves and houses, the harbour with its tiny
ships, and the narrow plain of the Konkan
bounded by the Ghauts on the east and south.
Looking straight down we saw underneath a
large bunder, with its sheds and basin, like the
farm yards which children make with a box of
toys. Bombay looked, as it always looks from
a height, beautiful as a fairy picture. The eye
rested on the groves and trees, the houses and
streets, the foliage predominating over the white
TWELVE VIEWS OF BOMBAY, 557
stucco, even far into the native town. The
Elphinstone College, Parell, and, in the distance,
the splendid buildings beyond the bare and brown
Esplanade, stood out clear and stately from the
panorama below. The whole contour of the
island with Trombay and other parts of Salsette
were part of the picture. The Vehar Lake, em-
bosomed in surrounding hills, we could almost
look down into. Across the harbour lay Elephanta,
looking very flat and insignificant when seen
from this elevation. Butcher’s Island, with its
lines of barracks, though smaller, was more
picturesque than the larger and far more interest-
ing Elephanta.--Abridged from Mr. Grattan
Geary’s Account of his Balloon Ascent on 1st De-
cember, 1877.
THE AGRICULTURIST, 1879.
Bombay, take it all in all, is the most picturesque
city in India. Viewed from Government House
on the Sea Point of Malabar Hill I have seen
nothing finer.—James Caird in Nineteenth Cem-
tury, 1879.
SIR. RICHARD TEMPLE, 1879.
Believe me that if our atmosphere were a little
less hazy, the scenery of Bombay would be little
inferior to that of Southern Italy, of Sicily, and
558 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
of Greece, which has delighted so many genera-
tions of men, and this native city may fairly take
its place with the finest cities of the East.
Not only is it superior to every other city of
India, but it is almost equal to such cities as
Cairo, Constantinople, Bagdad, Ispahan, and
Canton.—Sir Richard Temple's Speech, 1879.
BOM BAY,
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL,
TWELVE VIEWS.
56]
CHAPTER XXIV,
ROMBAY, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL,
TWELVE VIEWS.
AN EYE-WITNESS, 1690.
I CANNOT, without horror, mention to what a
pitch all vicious enormities were grown in this
place.
Their principles of action and the consequent
evil practices of the English forwarded their
miseries and contributed to fill the air with those
pestilential vapours that seized their vitals and
speeded their hasty passage to the other world.
Luxury, immodesty, and a prostitute dissolu-
tion of manners found still new matters to work
upon.—Anderson's Western India, 1854.
THE MUSLIM, 1694.
Mahomed Hashim Khafi Khan, author of the
“History of Aurungzeb,” was sent by the
Viceroy of Guzerat to the English in Bombay on
71
§62 BOOK OF BOMBAY,
a mission, on which occasion, while commending
them in other respects, he accuses them of levity
in laughing more than befitted the solemnity of
political intercourse.—Elliot’s Historians of India,
1877.
THE STATESMAN, 1707.
When the English first settled in India they
were mightily admired by the natives, believing
they were as innocent as themselves; but since,
by their example, they are grown very crafty and
cautious, and no people understand better their
own interest, so that it was easier to effect that
in one year which you shan’t do now in a century,
and the more obliging your management, the
more jealous they are of you.-President Pitt of
Madras, Grandfather of the Great Earl of
Ohatham.
THE POLITICAL ECONOMIST, 1775.
It is a very singular Government in which every
member of the administration wishes to get out
of the country, and consequently have done
with the Government as soon as he can, and
to whose interest and long after he has left it,
and carried his whole fortune, it is perfectly in-
different to him, though the whole country was
socIAL AND PoLITICAL TWELVE vIEws. 563
swallowed by an earthquake.—Smith's Wealth of
Nations.
TEIE CIVILIAN—CES GENS LA, 1765-83.
O my soul, come not thou into their secret,
into their assembly mine honour be not thou
united.—Forbes* Oriental Memoirs, 1813.
- LA FEMME ANGLAISE.
La femme Anglaise est un etre fort extraordi-
naire. La plus passionnée, celle qui plantera la
mari, enfans, consideration, pour courir apres un
autre homme, celle-là même aura pour cet homme,
à de nombreux égards, une réserve incompatible
avec l' intimité francaise, qui est, a mon sens, la
plus douce des formes de l' amitie. Il y a une
barriere de glace entre elle et moi que la passion
la plus ardente de ma part ne fondrait jamais
entierement. Il est bien entendu que quand je
dis moi, j entends un homme quelconque de
France, et même d'Angleterre, et non Victor
· Jacquemont.—Correspondance de Victor Jacque-
mont, 1833. -
MACKINTOSH'S BOMBAY, 1804-11.
The society of Bombay was not then so ex-
tensive as it has since become, and as to a certain
degree it had become before he left it. It
possessed, however, many able and estimable
564 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
persons, some extremely intelligent merchants,
several of them of uncommon matural powers,
some brave military officers, experienced practi-
tioners; and in the Civil Service, men well
versed in the conduct of affairs. Men of talent
occasionally visited it from all parts of India.-
Life of Sir James Mackintosh, 1835.
THE MISSIONARY, 1811.
Dined at Farish’s with a party of some very
intelligent and well-behaved young men.
What a remarkable difference between the old
inhabitants of India and the new comers. This
is owing to the number of religious families in
England.—Sargent's Life of Henry Martyn, 1819.
THE PERSIAN.
No wonder the Persian Ambassador on first
witnessing a ball at Bombay, after seeing one
dance and perceiving the ladies about to com-
mence another, observed with great politeness
turning round to the Governor, that he hoped
that they would put themselves to no more trouble
on his account.—General Briggs’ Letters to his
Son, 1828.
THE CHOTA SAHIB, 1830.
Society consisted chiefly of foolish burra sahibs
(great folks) who gave dinners, and chota Sahibs
socIAL AND PoLITICAL TWELVE VIEWs. 565
who ate them. The dinners were in execrable
taste, considering the climate. But the food for
the palate was scarcely more flavourless than the
conversation. Nothing could be more vapid than
the talk of the guests, except when some piece of
scandal affecting a lady's reputation, or a gentle-
man's officialintegrity gave momentary piquancy
to the dialogue.—Bombay Courier.
L' INDE OCCIDENTALE POONA, 1832.
Les Anglais de Poona ne sont pas amusans.
Dans le nord de l' Indoustan ou chacun d' eux est
une espece de pacha, ils grandissent avec leur
dignité, selon le principe, que noblesse oblige ;
et chose mirabile dictu ! ils deviennent même
aimables. Ici Je le retrouve au naturel, ce qui
n'est pas un compliment a leur faire. Toutefois,
comme Je suis accablé de besogne, il vaut
mieux peut-être quº il en soit ainsi. Je n'ai
aucune tentation d' aller chercher du plaisir
chez eux hors de mes paperasses. Ils me
rappellent Milord What Then de la Princesse de
Babylone, par leur prodigieuse indifference à tout
ce qui est en dehors du cercle etroit et routinier
de leur monotone existence. Je préfère les Cache-
myriens qui formaient seuls ma société l' an passé.
Je crois quils avaient plus de mouvement dans l'
566 BOOK OF BOMBAY.
esprit queles mécaniques vivantes, enhabits rouges
et noirs, qui peuplent ce quartier-general de
la puissance Anglaise dans l’Inde Occidentale.—
Victor Jacquemont, 1833.
THE CENSORIOUS, 1854.
Anglo-Indian society was, as it has ever been,
one degree worse than English.
Now that the world bears itself more morally,
there is still rather a lower standard of principle,
together with more shamelessness and disregard
of propriety in Bombay than in England.—An-
derson’s Western India.
EXCELSIOR.
However we may regret much that is still
common among Anglo-Indians, it is evident that
a very marked improvement has taken place in
the conduct of the higher classes, and the expla-
nation of this lies not merely in the fact that
India is now much nearer to England than she
was a century or two ago.—Bombay Guardian,
9th August, 1879.
BOMBAY : PRINTED AT THE BOMBAY GAZETTE STEAM PRESS.
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