Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/298

 trade for his honourable masters; these were readily granted by the grateful monarch, and, shortly after, an English factory was allowed to be established in Hughly. The position of the English settlement in the centre of a large Mohammedan town led to constant friction, and, in the end, the Hughly factory became untenable, the English left Bengal and went away to Madras, and when they finally returned it was to Chuttanutty, where they founded Calcutta.

It was while the English were at Hughly that the French and Danes established themselves in Bengal, about the year 1676. Taking warning from the difficulties experienced by the English, they obtained land on which to build their factories at some distance from Hughly and from each other, but on the river for the convenience of shipping their goods. The Dutch who arrived in Hughly during the Portuguese times had also a factory, but they selected a spot adjoining Hughly, and, in their plodding, phlegmatic way, kept themselves to themselves, and prospered accordingly. Captain Hamilton thus described their factory in the early years of the eighteenth century:—

"About half a league further up is Chinsurah, where the Dutch emporium stands. It is a large factory, walled high with brick. And the