Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/277

 VARYING FORTUNES AT MASUL1PATAM 225 a report in 1619, " hath been so fortunate and thrifty." But the control of Golkonda over its distant prov- inces was very different ' from the firm grasp of the Moghul Empire. We must bear in mind that the old Hindu rulers, whom the Golkonda kingdom displaced, still exercised an authority on the coast; and it was from them and not from the Golkonda court that we received our first grants at Masulipatam. The confu- sion was scarcely less wild than the scramble of rival native claimants on the same coast, into which the Eng- lish and the French plunged a century later. The re- treat of a rebel son of the Moghul emperor through the district in 1624 added to the disorder. The Dutch again won over the local governor, who made our position 11 insufferable.' f Unable to resist or revenge his " foul in juries," our factors resolved in despair to abandon Masulipatam. They declared they would never return except under a grant from the King of Golkonda direct. On September 27, 1628, they stole out of their factory, leaving all behind, and secretly set off in a small boat for Armagon. Their hard experiences in that wild roadstead fur- ther down the coast, I shall presently relate. In 1630, finding it impossible to collect a sufficient supply of the " white cloths " at Armagon, they crept back to Masulipatam. They returned to a city silenced by death, with no one either to help or hinder them. The great famine which desolated Surat had stretched across the whole Indian continent. At Masulipatam,