Page:On the Coromandel Coast.djvu/15

 was found further south. The spot chosen had nothing to commend it but its negative qualities. It had no harbour, no natural fortress, no deep inland waterway. Its undesirability gave the handful of Englishmen who formed the first colony a reasonable hope that they would be left unmolested by a stronger power.

There was a village of Muckwas, the peaceful fisher-folk of the Coromandel Coast; but they pursued their gentle craft and paid no heed to the foreigners. Their humble mud dwellings were not calculated to excite the cupidity of the strangers and they had nothing to fear. Here upon the bleached sand in front of the terrible surf the servants of the Company built a fort which they named after their patron saint, St. George (1640). The fort formed the nucleus of the present town of Madras, and proved, by its steadily increasing prosperity, that the old merchants had made no error of judgment when they planted the Company's flag upon its walls. Whatever the difficulties of shipping might be without a harbour, it was the right centre for the inland trade.

The directors of the Company, however, were unable to pierce the secrets of the future. When they read a plain unvarnished description of their new settlement their faith in their agents was broken. They could see nothing in it that held out any hope of success. It was their custom in those early days to keep what they called 'Black Books,' two volumes of which still remain for posterity to smile over. The names of defaulting servants were entered with the offences of which they had been guilty. The names of the two men who were the founders of the new agency were duly inscribed in the following manner : 'Frauncis Day, blamed to be the first projector of the Forte of St. George. The worke begunne by Frauncis Day and paid for out of the Company's cash' After the name of Andrew Cogan, agent for the