LETTER V. BOMBAY TO OOTACAMUND. LEAVING Bombay on the 21st December by a steamer of the British and India Steam Navigation Company we arrived at Calicut on Christmas-day. This Company almost monopolizes the coasting trade of the Peninsula, the Persian Gulf, and the Bay of Bengal, having a large fleet of screw steamers, Glasgow built, which carry the Indian Government mails, and are comfortably arranged for travellers along these broiling but sometimes tempestuous shores. The ports touched at are Vingorla, Carwar-one of the best harbours on the coast, a small village brought into importance by a cotton press company-Mangalore, a military station, Cannanore, the land first sighted by Vasco da Gama, Tellicherry, and Wuddakurry, all close to the coast, and, with the exception of Carwar, open roadsteads. Immemorial palm forests fringe the shores, backed by the range of Ghauts. Cotton, coffee, and the products of the coco palm are the principal exports. The first two, cultivated on the high lands, are brought down to the ports to be cleaned and packed. Between Vingorla and Carwar is the Portuguese settlement of Goa, and between Tellicherry and Wuddakurry, the French station of Mahé, two square miles in extent, and having the reputation of being a nest of smugglers. Landing at Calicut on Christmas-day, the boat, cut out of a single teak stem, and large enough to accommodate a dozen passengers, rowed by two powerful Indians, was pulled up on a shelving sandy beach, extending without visible limit on either side, through which a green sward brightened even the ocean's edge. A crowd of aborigines greet you, volunteering to carry luggage, and direct you to the nearest hotel, a bungalow, kept by a pensioner. tr What is there to see here, Morris ?" "Nothing, sir; it be the miserablest place in the world." * There is an interest attached to it, for in May, 1498, “O grande argonauta, Dom Vasco da Gama, Conde de Vidiguiera, almirante das Indias Orientaes, é seo famozo descobridor" coming from Lisbon viá "Mombaza and Quiloa and Melind," first landed here. † * "Disse alegre o Piloto Melendano, Terra he de Calecut,' se não me engano." CAMOENS, Canto vi. s. 92. "Now rising Sol with gold those mountains tips FANSHAW. The city of Calicut, as it was the principal one of India, on account of its great trade since ancient times, was all inhabited by foreign and native Moors, the richest that there were in all India. There were Moors of Grand Cairo, who brought large fleets of many ships, with much trade of valuable goods, which they brought from Mecca, and they took back in return pepper and drugs, and all the other richest merchandise of India, with which they acquired great wealth; and the people who are natives of the country have no profit from it, nor income, but only enough to sustain themselves with."-J. H. Van Linschoten. + "Before these discoveries the spice was brought to Europe with vast trouble and charge. Cloves, nutmegs, mace, sandal and camphor wood, and all the other richer spices, gums, perfumes, and curiosities of China, Java, Siam, and other kingdoms, were carried to the market of the city of Malacca, in the Golden Chersonese, whence the inhabitants of all the western countries as far as the Red Sea brought them, dealing by way of barter; for no money was used, silver and gold being of less value there than with them that traded thither. "Thus trade was enriched; the cities of Calicut, Cambay, Ormuz, and Aden, adding to what they brought from Malacca, the rubies of Pegu, the stuffs of Bengal, the pearls of Calicare, the diamonds of Narsinga, the cinnamon, and richer rubies of Ceylon, the pepper, ginger, and other spices of the coast of Malabar. "From Ormuz, they were brought to Europe, up the Persian Gulf to Basora, at the mouth of the Euphrates, and thence distributed in caravans through Armenia, Trebizond, Tartary, Aleppo, and Damascus, and then at the port of Beyrout, on the Medi Calicut, named after the goddess Cali, who delights in sacrifices and has been propitiated by hecatombs of human victims, the place whence cotton cloth was originally exported, gave the name to Calico.* The churches and churchyards contain no records of terranean, the Venetians, Genoese, and Catalonians, laded with them to their respective countries. Such as came up the Red Sea were landed at Toro, or Suez, thence went in caravans to Grand Cairo, so down the Nile to Alexandria, and thence shipped off."-Faria y Souza, Asia Portuguesa. * "The deceits usually put upon calicuts are in fineness, length, and breadth. Every bale may contain two hundred pieces, among which they will juggle in five or six or ten less fine or less white, shorter or narrower, than according to the scantling of the bale, which cannot be found out but by examining them piece by piece. The fineness is discerned by the eye, the length and breadth by the measure. But the Indians practise a more cunning way, which is to count the number of threads which ought to be in the breadth, according to the fineness of the scantling. When the number fails, it is either more transparent, more narrow or more coarse. The difference is sometimes so difficult to be perceived that there is no way to find it out but by counting the threads. And yet this difference in a great quantity comes to a great deal. For it is nothing to cousen a crown or two crowns in a piece that comes Ꮐ |