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 hill-forts among the Western Ghauts, began to make these ravaging horsemen feared far and wide, till their raids were the terror of all India.

Among the quickly-fading glories of the Mogul Empire, almost unnoticed came the appearance of the new strangers who would inherit it. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, when all the gorgeous East was still a wonderland of wealth in Christian imaginations. Then followed the Dutch, who, however, fixed their chief attention upon the spice islands of the Archipelago. On the last day of 1600, the East India Company was incorporated by royal charter at London, none yet dreaming to what greatness it would rise. A few years later, an English ambassador, sent by James I., made his way to the Court of the Great Mogul, and received assurances of favour and encouragement for trade. About the same time, our first settlement was made on the Coromandel coast. In 1615 a factory was established at Surat, on the other side of India; then, half-a-century later, the head-quarters of the enterprise were shifted to Bombay, ceded by Portugal in 1661, which, being an island, seemed safe from Sivajee's plundering horsemen.