of Rochelle in high relief, which had been ordered by Cardinal Richelieu, and was valued at 4,378 livres; a battle-mace of rock crystal; and other rarities to the total value of 12,000 livres, or about 9007. And an equal amount had to be distributed among the chief officers of the Court. All foreign jewellers who arrived at a port were instantly compelled to go to the capital and offer their wares for the Emperor's inspection. Fortunately travelling had become much safer since the time of Mandelslo, for Tavernier reports that in his own time the roads were so safe that an execution for theft was unheard of. This is, however, hardly confirmed by his contemporary Thevenot, who describes a singularly unpleasant trick in some parts of India, where a woman decoyed the traveller by feigning distress, and her comrades proceeded to lasso him from their place of concealment. Tavernier, Bernier, and Thevenot were all in India in the year 1666, and the two former travelled in company down the Ganges. Their writings should be studied together, as cach has much to relate that the others did not record. Of the three, Thevenot is much the slightest. He arrived at Surat in January 1666, and, after travelling over the greater part of India, died in Persia on his way home in November 1667. His Travels are necessarily more or less hurried first impressions, but he had access to some important native authorities, and his statistics are peculiarly valuable.

With Thevenot we take leave of the wide-ranging traveller in the Mogul Empire; for Fryer, Ovington, and Gemelli Careri only visited certain restricted regions, and Hedges and Manucci were not primarily travellers at all. Dr. John Fryer, M.D. of Cambridge, and subsequently F.R.S., went out to India, by virtue of an Order from the Honourable East-India Company,' in December 1672, and after visiting Madras, Masulipatam, and other parts of Southern India, arrived at Bombay exactly a year after his sailing from Gravesend. The island of Bombay formed part of the dowry which Catherine of Braganza brought to Charles II. in 1661; but the Portuguese local authorities at first refused to recognize the cession, and it was not till 1664 that the English obtained possession of the island. In 1669 the King transferred it by letters patent to the East India Company, to be held as of the Manor of East Greenwich' in iree and common soccage at a farm rent of 107. The Company was therefore hardly settled in its new possession-destined to become the most important commercial centre of British India-when Dr. Fryer arrived on the scene. His account of

the

the youthful colony is naturally extremely interesting, and he has much to say that is noteworthy about the older factory at Surat. He did not, however, penetrate far into the interior. Some expeditions along the coast and into the Concan were his main achievements. It so happened, however, that the Concan was at that time the theatre of events vital to the very existence of the Mogul supremacy. Here Sivaji was laying the foundations of the Mahratta power, which eventually reduced the Great Moguls to the condition of helpless puppets, and made havoc of the empire, until in turn overcome by the British arms. Fryer describes an embassy sent from Bombay to the Mahratta Raja, but did not accompany it himself. He saw, however, many traces of Sivaji's violence, especially at Surat, which still showed many ruins caused during the invasion of the Mahrattas in January 1664, when they sacked the whole place with the exception of the English and Dutch factories, which were successfully defended. He also made an adventurous journey, in his capacity of physician, over the Ghats to Junir, of which he has preserved a vivid description. His New

Account of India,' of which there is no good modern edition, ranks as our best contemporary European authority on the state of the Concan at the period preceding Aurangzib's great

invasion.

Dr. Fryer, after spending three years in Persia, returned to Surat in 1679, and finally left India in 1681. Seven years later a clerical visitor, the Rev. James Ovington, arrived to carry on the chain of European evidence. His ambition, however, did not carry him beyond Bombay and Surat, and his narrative is chiefly valuable for the early history of the East India Company. Whatever else he has to tell is at secondhand, and represents the current talk of the English merchants. Ovington was evidently a very simple credulous parson, a little inclined, like many good people, to repeat scandal, and ready to believe whatever he was told. The common talk of the merchants, reported even by so uncritical a hearer, has, however, a certain value. We read a good deal about the Emperor Aurangzib, who was then (1688) an old man of seventy, but nevertheless destined to live and fight on for nearly twenty years more. When Ovington was at Bombay, the aged Emperor had embarked on his quarter of a century of unceasing campaigns in the Deccan, whence news of his doings would more readily reach the English factory than when he was at Delhi. The general opinion of him was, of course, prejudiced: he was regarded as a hypocrite, mainly because he was an exceptionally

rigorous

rigorous and devout Mohammedan. His justice was, however, admitted :

'He is the main Ocean of Justice and generally determines with exact Justice and Equity, for there is no pleading of Peeridge or Priviledge before the Emperor, but the meanest man is as soon heard by Aurang-Zebe as the chief Omrah. . . . I believe there has not been a Criminal for this twenty years that has suffered a capital punishment at Suratt. The Power of Life and Death is the Emperor's prerogative, which he hardly vouchsafes to communicate to any Civil Judge, except they be at a distance, but reserves that Authority entirely to himself. . . . The Mogul is now past Eighty Years of Age [70], but yet administers the weighty Affairs of his vast Kingdom, and retains a Vigour in his Discerning Faculties.'

Gemelli Careri, a Neapolitan physician, confirms this testimony to Aurangzib's unnatural energy in his old age. He describes the Emperor, who was then seventy-eight, as personally commanding an army of 300,000 horse and 400,000 foot-the latter figure doubtless including many camp-followersand as in the fifteenth year of his long but fruitless war against the Mahrattas, which ended only with his death in 1707.

There is one source for the history of the reign of Aurangzib which might be expected to prove of supreme authority. At the beginning of the eighteenth century a French literary hack,' Père François Catrou of the Company of Jesus, was given a manuscript history in Portuguese of the Mogul Empire, which was stated to be the work of a Venetian named Manouchi,' or properly Manucci, who had lived at the Mogul Court for forty-eight years, i.e. since 1649, and wrote these Memoirs in 1697. He was a physician, and had been employed in responsible posts at Court, was familiar with the secrets of the palace,' and had enjoyed access to the authentic records of the Government, which he had caused to be carefully translated into Portuguese, and which formed the basis of his history. The work included the annals of the Mogul Empire from the commencement, but was naturally most copious concerning the reigns of Shah-Jahan and Aurangzib, the author's contemporaries. Catrou published the history down to the accession of Aurangzib in 1705, and added the rest in 1715. Had he contented himself with a straightforward translation, he would have rendered a signal service to Indian history; but he preferred to 'edit' it, by interpolating whatever he found interesting in the works of other travellers, without giving any indication to show which passage was Manucci's and which was interpolated from other sources. The result is a work which,

in spite of its copious information and undoubted interest, it is

impossible

impossible to treat as a first-hand authority. Until the original Portuguese manuscript of Manucci, which Catrou preserved, is accurately published, every serious historian is bound to use the 'Histoire de l'Empire du Mogol' with extreme caution. There is moreover much about Manucci's biography, as slightly indicated by Catrou, to arouse suspicion. It is at least strange that so trusted a personage at the Mogul Court should never be mentioned by Bernier or Tavernier, and that a man who was employed in responsible posts in the Deccan towards the close of the century should not have been heard of by another Italian, Gemelli Careri. The statement that his work was founded on the official histories is open to serious doubt, at least for the later periods; for it is well known that Aurangzib peremptorily forbade any writing of chronicles after the year 1669. The internal evidence is also against Manucci's veracity. His tone is that of the servants' hall; his genius lies in scandal; and it is difficult to believe that many of his stories had any better foundation than the malice of a disappointed adventurer. It appears almost incredible that a man living in a position of trust for half a century could commit the numerous blunders in chronology and errors in fact with which his history abounds. Nor does it appear probable that a man who could deliberately warn the Portuguese Viceroy against the duplicity of his own employer the Emperor would have been trusted for so many years by a sovereign of Aurangzib's penetration. Much of this criticism may be successfully combated if the Portuguese text can be produced and the blame for the numerous errors of the published work thrown upon the editor. But until this is done, Catrou-Manucci cannot safely be relied upon as an authority for Mogul history.

Enough has been said to show that the task of editing and annotating the records of Indian travellers during the seventeenth century is one well worthy of the industry of scholars. Manucci, Mandelslo, Roe, Fryer, Thevenot, and others still await an editor equipped with all the apparatus of modern research. Mr. Constable, Dr. Ball, and Mr. Grey have set an excellent example, thanks largely to the encouragement of the ever-to-belamented Sir Henry Yule, who in this department of learned work stood absolutely unapproached. Much remains to be done, however, before the important mass of materials collected by European travellers shall become accessible, and the most remarkable of all Mohammedan Empires shall be set before English readers in all its singular details.

ART.

ART. IX.-1. Reports of the National Agricultural Conference. 'Times,' Dec. 8 and Dec. 9, 1892.

2. Parliamentary Debates for the Session 1893.

3. Silver up to Date. By Moreton Frewen. 'Fortnightly Review,' January 1893.

SAD

AD as was the condition of British Agriculture when five years ago we called attention in this Review to the state of our greatest industry,* we have gone, as we ventured to prophesy we should do, unless something unforeseen happened to help us, from bad to worse.

We rarely take up a paper without reading a harrowing description of the losses and trials of our unfortunate landowners and farmers. We have, in fact, gone down the hill at such an alarming rate that the representatives of our Agriculture, who are perhaps slower to move than the representatives of other industries, have at last come to the conclusion that, if they would escape ruin, they must do something. Concerning that something they appear by no means unanimous; and the best friends of British Agriculture regret that the representative conference, which assembled in St. James's Hall in December last, should have been so divided in opinion, and should have spent so much time in discussions which, under existing circumstances, tend to drive those who should work together into opposite camps. It is said that more than 240 clubs, associations, and unions, consisting of both farmers and labourers, in all parts of the United Kingdom, sent delegates to the conference, while many of the leading landowners and their agents attended in person. All branches of the Landed Interest were present; and no one, however small his information, can doubt that the subject which they came together to discuss was one of the greatest importance and urgency.

All must in deepest sympathy believe the account of loss that British farmers have sustained during the last fifteen years; a loss which culminated last year in one of the worst seasons ever experienced, and in the lowest prices ever recorded. The agricultural community stand in a position that deserves the commiseration of all their fellow-subjects. Through no fault or error of their own, on the contrary in the face of much selfdenial and industry, they find themselves in grievous trouble; and they are confronted by an economic crisis brought about to a great extent by causes quite beyond their own control.

*See Quarterly Review,' No. 331, January 1888: "Landed Interests and Landed Estates."