Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/265

 MISFORTUNES OF THE FACTORY AT SUBAT 215 pur formed a chief inlet of the Arabian commerce for the yet unconquered kingdoms of the South. In vain the Company's servants at Surat protested and tried to found a rival station in the South. Captain Weddell secured by lavish gifts the support of the King of Bija- pur, and began to plant factories along the coast. The sagacity of his selection is proved by the part which these factories played in the subsequent annals of the Company. From home the Surat factory could get no succour, nor any certain sound from their distracted masters, then in their desperate struggle with the court cabal. We have seen that fifty-seven ships and eighteen pin- naces had been sent out for port to port trade alone, during the twelve years ending 1629. The Company's records, which during the same period abound in jour- nals of voyages to and from India, preserve only eight such documents for the thirteen disastrous years from King Charles's grant to Courten's Association in 1635 to his Majesty's death in 1649. But the factors of the Company at Surat, although left to ruin, asserted their vitality in a wholly unex- pected manner. They practically kept up the trade on their own account, continued to patrol the pilgrim highway, and maintained an attitude at once so reason- able and so resolute that the Moghul government re- pented of having punished them for the piracy of their rivals. As the emperor used the English to check the pi- racy of the Portuguese, so he employed them to bring