Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/93

Rh meal of four or five sorts of well-dressed meats, of which "he eateth a bit to stay his stomach, drinking once of his stronge drinke. Then he cometh forth into a private roome, where none can come but such as himself nominateth (for two yeeres I was one of his attendants here). In this place he drinketh other five cupfuls, which is the portion that the Physicians alot him. This done he eateth opium, and then he ariseth, and being in the height of his drinke, he layeth him down to sleep, every man departing to his own home. And after he hath slept two houres they awake him, and bring his supper to him, at which time he is not able to feed himselfe; but it is thrust into his mouth by others, and this is about one of the clock; and then he sleepeth the rest of the night."

Such was Akbar's successor, and such the sovereign to whom Sir Thomas Roe presented his credentials as ambassador of the King of England in January, 1615. Roe had come to complete what Hawkins had only partly succeeded in effecting. The English agents and traders were still in a humiliating situation, subject to all kinds of indignities, possessing no recognized or valid rights, and obliged to sue and bribe for such slight facilities as they could win. Their chiefs, the agents of the East India Company, had brought scorn upon their nation by "kotowing" to the Moghul dignitaries, cringing to insult, and asserting no trace of dignity; and had even "suffered blowes of the porters, base Peons, and beene thrust out by them with much scorne by head and shoulders without seeking satisfaction."