206 FIRST SETTLEMENTS ON THE BOMBAY COAST to the Persian Gulf, were piled up on the wharves of the Tapti. Merchants flocked in such numbers to Surat that during the busy winter months lodgings could scarcely be had. A succession of able men directed the English factory; and soon after 1616 a Surat chaplain, Henry Lord, commenced those liberal researches into the native customs and religions, which are among the most honourable memorials of our Indian rule, and A NATIVE VESSEL IN THE STRAITS OP MALACCA. which have done much to mould that rule to the needs of the people. The Company saw the position which its little band of servants had won on the Gulf of Cambay, and rec- ognized the president at Surat as the chief of the Eng- lish in India. After Amboyna the hopes of reviving the trade in the Spice Archipelago flickered out, and in 1630 even Bantam, its headquarters in Java, was declared subordinate to Surat. In the same year a calamity fell upon Gujarat which enables us to realize the terrible meaning of the word famine in India under native rule. Whole districts and cities were left bare of inhabitants.
