Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/178

 The list which follows begins with an elegant assortment of millinery and "Piano-Fortes with organs underneath and Flute stops," and ranges from mahogany furniture, wines, ale, cheese, pickles, and herrings, ladies hats with feathers, gentlemen's ditto, and children's ditto, boots and shoes, fancy cloths, doe breeches, and gloves, to vinegar, oil, and mustard, guns and telescopes, books and "perambulators," spectacles and speaking-trumpets. This varied assortment of goods were to be sold at low prices, with a deduction of ten per cent, for cash paid on delivery, and eight per cent, for all bills paid at the end of the month.

As this trade became established, other and more ambitious rivals entered the field. Mrs. Fay, as we have seen, opened a shop in 1785, and imported two young ladies to assist her in it; and many others came and went several times between London and Calcutta with their investments, a speculation of no little enterprise, considering that the voyage each way occupied six months, and was liable to risks of shipwreck, piracy, and foreign capture. Mrs. Fay herself, when on her first voyage to Bengal, was with her husband made prisoner by Hyder Ali, and only reached Calcutta after suffering many hardships. When Sir Elijah Impey left India in 1783