Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/96

Rh he gained some military experience. When he left Butler to view the diet of Ratisbon in 1630, he had seen Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, and Hungary, as well as France, England, and the Low Countries, and spoke the principal languages of these regions. He was now eager to visit the East, and at Ratisbon he found the opportunity to join two French fathers, M. de Chapes and M. de St Liebau, who had received a mission to the Levant. In their company he reached Constantinople early in 1631, and here he spent eleven months, and then proceeded by Tokat, Erzerum, and Erivan to Persia. His farthest point in this first journey was Ispahan; he returned by Baghdad, Aleppo, Alexandretta, Malta, and Italy, and was again in Paris in 1633. Of the next five years of his life nothing is known with certainty, but it is probable that it was during this period that he became controller of the household of the duke of Orleans. In September 1638 he began a second journey (1638-43) by Aleppo to Persia and thence to India as far as Agra and Golconda. His visit to the court of the Great Mogul and to the famous diamond mines was, of course, connected with the plans realized more fully in his later voyages, in which Tavernier travelled as a merchant of the highest rank, trading in costly jewels and other precious wares, and finding his chief customers among the greatest princes of the East. The second journey was followed up by four others. In his third journey (1643-49) he went as far as Java and returned by the Cape; but his relations with the Dutch proved not wholly satisfactory, and a long lawsuit on his return yielded but imperfect redress. In his last three journeys (1651-55, 1657-62, 1664-68) he did not proceed beyond India. The details of these voyages need not detain us here, and indeed are often obscure; but they completed an extraordinary knowledge of the routes of overland Eastern trade, and brought the now famous merchant into close and friendly communication with the greatest Oriental potentates. They also secured for him a large fortune and great reputation at home. He was presented to Louis XIV., "in whose service he had travelled sixty thousand leagues by land," received letters of nobility (16th February 1669), and in the following year purchased the barony of Aubonne, near Geneva. In 1662 he had married Madeleine Goisse, daughter of a Parisian jeweller.

Thus settled in ease and affluence, Tavernier occupied himself, as it would seem at the desire of the king, in publishing the account of his journeys. He had neither the equipment nor the tastes of a scientific traveller, but in all that referred to commerce his knowledge was vast and could not fail to be of much public service. He set to work therefore with the aid of Samuel Chappuzeau, a French Protestant litterateur, and produced a Nouvelle Relation de l'lntérieur du Sérail du Grand Seigneur (4to, Paris, 1675), based on two visits to Constantinople in his first and sixth journeys. This was followed by Le Six Voyages de J. B, Tavernier (2 vols. 4to, Paris, 1676) and by a supplementary Recueil de Plusieurs Relations (4to, Paris, 1679), in which he was assisted by a certain La Ohapelle. This last contains an account of Japan, gathered from merchants and others, and one of Tong-king, derived from the observations of his brother Daniel, who had shared his second voyage and settled at Batavia; it contained also a violent attack on the agents of the Dutch East India Company, at whose hands Tavernier had suffered more than one wrong. This attack was elaborately answered in Dutch by H. van Quellenburgh {Vindiciæ Batavicæ, Amst., 1684), but made more noise because Arnauld drew from it some material unfavourable to Protestantism for his Apologie pour les Catholiques (1681), and so brought on the traveller a ferocious onslaught in Jurieu's Esprit de M. Arnauld (1684). Tavernier made no reply to Jurieu; he was in fact engaged in weightier matters, for in 1684 he travelled to Berlin at the invitation of the Great Elector, who commissioned him to organize an Eastern trading company,—a project never realized. The closing years of Tavernier's life are obscure; the time was not favourable for a Protestant, and it has even been supposed that he passed some time in the Bastille. What is certain is that he left Paris for Switzerland in 1687, that in 1689 he passed through Copenhagen on his way to Persia through Muscovy, and that in the same year he died at Moscow. It appears that he had still business relations in the East, and that the neglect of these by his nephew, to whom they were intrusted, had determined the indefatigable old man to a fresh journey.

Tavernier's travels, though often reprinted and translated, have two defects: the author uses other men's material without distinguishing it from his own observations; and the narrative is much confused by his plan of often deserting the chronological order and giving instead notes from various journeys about certain routes. The latter defect, it is true, while it embarrasses the biographer, is hardly a blemish in view of the object of the writer, who sought mainly to furnish a guide to other merchants. A careful attempt to disentangle the thread of a life still in many parts obscure has been made by Charles Joret, Jean Baptiste Tavernier d'après des Documents Nouveaux, 8vo, Paris, 1886, where the literature of the subject is fully given.

 TAVIRA, a seaport of Portugal, in the province of Algarves, at the mouth of the Seca, 21 miles east-north-east of Faro. It is regularly built, and has an alcazar, used as an official residence, besides other public buildings. It has sardine and tunny fisheries, and carries on a considerable coasting trade. Excellent fruit is grown in the neighbourhood. The population in 1878 was 11,459.  TAVISTOCK, a town of Devonshire, England, is finely situated in the valley of the Tavy, on the western border of Dartmoor, and on the South Devon Railway, 15 miles north of Plymouth, 14 south-east of Launceston, and 213 west-south-west of London. The town has been greatly improved since 1845, chiefly at the expense of the duke of Bedford, by the construction of a system of sewage and the erection of many new dwellings suitable for the working classes. There are some remains (including a portion in the square, now used as a public library established in 1799) of the magnificent abbey of Sts Mary and Rumon, first founded in 961 by Orgar, earl of Devon. After destruction by the Danes in 997 it was restored, and among its famous abbots were Lyfing, friend of Canute, and Aldred, who crowned Harold II. and William, and died archbishop of York. The abbey church was rebuilt in 1285, and the greater part of the abbey in 1457-58. The church of St Eustachius possesses a lofty tower supported on four open arches. Among the principal public buildings are the guild-hall (1848), the corn market (1838), the market buildings (1858), and the new hall for concerts and public entertainments. Near the town is Kelly College, opened in 1877, founded by Admiral Benedictus Marwood Kelly, with a preference for the founder's kin. Mines of copper, manganese, lead, silver, and tin are in the neighbourhood, and the town possesses a considerable trade in cattle and corn, as well as a brewery. The population of the township in 1881 was 6914. The parliamentary borough (area 11,450 acres), which had a population in 1871 of 7725 and in 1881 of 6879, was merged in the county in 1885.

The town owes its origin to the foundation of the abbey in 961. From Henry I. the abbots obtained the entire jurisdiction of the hundred of Tavistock, with a weekly market. A school for Saxon literature was established by the monks, which flourished till the Reformation. The Royalists were quartered at Tavistock after the defeat of the Parliamentarians on Bradock Down in 1643, and Charles I. visited it on his way to Cornwall. It returned members to parliament from the time of Edward I. till 1885, among its representatives having been John Pym, the great opposer of the policy of Charles I., and William, Lord Russell, beheaded in the