Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/292

 240 FIRST SETTLEMENTS ON THE BENGAL COAST of the swamps. Next month, June, 1633, Cartwright founded the factory of Balasor further up the coast, and near the present boundary between Orissa and Bengal. The Masulipatam Council gave loyal support, by sending on to him the Swan with her whole cargo, just arrived from England; and on July 22, 1633, she anchored off the Moghul customs-station of Harishpur. There she broke the silence of the swamps by firing three guns, but receiving no answer, sailed up the coast till she found Cartwright at Balasor. Everything seemed to smile on the adventurers, and they projected outlying factories at Puri in the southern extremity, and at Pippli on the northern boundary of the Orissa seaboard. But their brief pros- perity ended in disaster and death. The cargo of the Swan, chiefly broadcloth and lead, found no purchasers at Balasor, and lay for nearly a year unsold. The lus- cious fruits and cheap arak of Orissa formed tempta- tions which the English sailors could not resist, and during the rainy season the deadly malaria of the swamps crept round their factory at Hariharpur in the mid-delta as round a beleaguered city. Before the end of the year, five of our six factors in Orissa perished; the mortality among the sailors was terrible; and a second English ship sent thither had to make her way back to Madras with most of her crew stricken down by fever. It is difficult for us now to realize the miseries which the English, with their national habits of eating and drinking, suffered in the stifling forecastles and, cabins of their ships, and in the