Page:Aurangzíb and the Decay of the Mughal Empire.djvu/122

116 a cause of loss and dread to the traders at the mouths of the Ganges. Every kind of criminal from Goa or Ceylon, Cochin or Malacca, mostly Portuguese or half-castes, flocked to Chittagong, where the King of Arakán, delighted to welcome any sort of allies against his formidable neighbour the Mughal, permitted them to settle. They soon developed a busy trade in piracy; 'scoured the neighbouring seas in light galleys, called galleasses, entered the numerous arms and branches of the Ganges, ravaged the islands of Lower Bengal, and, often penetrating forty or fifty leagues up the country, surprised and carried away the entire population of villages. The marauders made slaves of their unhappy captives, and burnt whatever could not be removed .' The Portuguese settled at the Húglí had abetted these rascals by purchasing whole cargoes of cheap slaves, and had been punished for these and other misdeeds in an exemplary manner by Sháh-Jahán, who took their town and carried the whole Portuguese population captive to Agra (1630). But though the Portuguese power no longer availed them, the pirates went on with their rapine, and carried on operations with even greater vigour from the island of Sandíp, off Chittagong, where 'the notorious Fra Joan, an Augustinian monk, reigned as a petty sovereign during many years, having contrived, God knows how, to rid himself of the governor of the island.' It was those freebooters who had sailed up to Dhakká, and enabled