In the early days of the East India Company, its relations with its employés were of a kind which seems very strange to modern ideas. Those in its service were expected to work at starvation wages, a usage which dated probably from the time when the Company (like others of its kind) was a mere association of adventurers for purposes of trade, each man investing what he could spare in the general fund, and receiving in return board and lodging and a small sum as pocket-money, until, on the termination of the adventure, the profits could be equally divided. Applied to a permanent undertaking, and to men who had no property to invest, but depended for their livelihood on what they could earn, this system was certain to break down, and the natural result was that the Company’s servants made use of the information they gained in their official capacity to engage in trade on their own account. The Company looked askance at this, but it was impossible to prevent private trading so long as a writer was forced to serve for five years for £10 a-year (about £30 of our money), and even a full merchant earned only £40 a-year. This penny-wise-and-pound-foolish policy was, nevertheless, persisted in, with the natural consequence that while the Company’s servants grew rich by means of private ventures, the Company’s own trade barely paid its expenses.
APPENDIX IV.
OLD AND NEW GOA AND MODERN GOA.
The Goa of our days is not that known to the visitors of the seventeenth century. The quarter which they called Old Goa has disappeared from the earth, and the splendid city of New Goa is the Old Goa of to-day. Its greatness began to decay with the decline of the Portuguese power in India, and the removal of the government to Panjim, nearer the mouth of the river, completed its ruin. Dr Claudius Buchanan, who visited it in 1808, describes it as a city of churches, but observes that there were seldom any worshippers besides the officiating priests. Since his day matters have gone steadily from bad to worse, and the population, thinned by pestilence and emigration, is now scarcely that of a small village. Churches and public buildings alike have fallen into decay, and the ruins are fast being overspread by the growth of tropical vegetation. Panjim, the “New Goa” of to-day, is about three miles from the mouth of the river, and enjoys the small remains of the state and commerce which once made Goa the chief city of the Indies.
APPENDIX V.
THE FRENCH AT SAN THOMÉ.
The seizure and occupation of San Thomé by the French after their departure from Trincomalee is a historical fact. The place, which is also called Mailapur or Meliapore (the peacock city), is now a mere suburb of Madras. Its earlier vicissitudes are detailed in the text. The French took possession of it in 1672, and after sustaining a two years’ blockade, enforced both by land and sea, marched out with the honours of war in 1674. Accounts vary somewhat as to the exact dates and other details connected with this siege. I have followed Fryer’s narrative, as being that of a contemporary. The first head of the expedition was Caron, who was drowned in a shipwreck after being summoned back to France to give an account of himself. The next leader whose name has been preserved is François Martin, the founder of Pondichery, but as Fryer speaks of a “viceroy,” to whom the credit of the long and skilful defence was due, I have ventured to introduce the character of the Marquis de Tourvel. In any case, the incidents (including that of the stratagem by which the Dutch fleet was temporarily driven away) are real, the persons only fictitious. The history of this little band of Frenchmen, as also their subsequent adventures at Pondichery, reads like a romance.
APPENDIX VI.
THE HISTORICAL BASIS OF THIS STORY.
In writing ‘In Furthest Ind,’ my object has not been so much to trace the course of any definite series of events, as to give a general idea of the fortunes and misfortunes likely to fall to the lot of an Englishman in the East during the earlier stages of what it is correct to call the Expansion of England. Hence I have left it to historians to follow the precise details of the relations which existed between the English at Surat and Bombay, Sivaji, and the government of Aurangzib, and have avoided as far as possible introducing real personages into the story. This naturally involves a fictitious element in the events in which the characters take part, although the incidents are in the main true in their origin, if not in their arrangement. Thus, the account of the dealings between Sivaji and the French is true, but the personal adventures of the Vicomte de Galampré are fictitious, and the two occasions on which Sivaji appears are not historical, although they may be paralleled many times over from his life. The history of the French at San Thomé has been fully dealt with in a preceding note. Although Mr Carlyon’s escape from the Auto da Fé is fictitious, yet many of its details are taken from an actual case. In a word, my effort has been rather to present a picture than to construct a history, selecting from the mass of available material such data as might best contribute to the result in view.
THE END.
ENDNOTES.
[1] servant] Suitor.