VIZAGAPATAM,
resolved that M. George Ramsden doe proceed for this year as Chiefe 1[1] there,' his Second in Council being one Clément du Jardin. Thus it is clear that it was largely fear of the rivalry of the ubiquitous interloper which led the Company to first settle in Vizagapatam. Thirteen days later the first official letter was sent from Fort St. George to 'Vizagapatam' and thereafter correspondence with the factory appears regularly in the records.
Messrs. Ramsden and du Jardin did not let the grass grow under their feet. In October of the same year they wrote that in spite of the bitter hostility of the Dutch at Bimlipatam they had made a respectable investment; had obtained a cowle from the 'Seir Lascar' (apparently the same as the Faujdar) of Chicacole giving them liberties' throughout the Carlingae (Kalinga) country farr greater than ever was granted to the Dutch, notwithstanding they have bin settled in these pts for these 20 years, which is a very great heartburning'; had arranged to bribe the Kasimkóta chief ('a very powerful pson') not to molest their customers; had patched up for their quarters an old house standing on the piece of ground given them by the Seer Lascar ; had engaged six 'Rashboots' (Rájputs) as a guard; and had searched in vain for interlopers but in accordance with orders had hung the King's proclamation and the printed rules and orders concerning those gentry round their dyeing room, 'which God knows is scarce bigg enough to hould them.' They earnestly beg a reconsideration of orders which had been passed directing them to go to Masulipatam at the end of the year, pointing out how disappointed the Seer Lascar would be, and how triumphant the Dutch; and this request was evidently granted.
The next year, however, these two pioneers fell out; and Ramsden was temporarily suspended and du Jardin recalled. The latter was eventually dismissed, in spite of the protests of Fort St.George, by the Directors, who pronounced him 'a huffing, swaggering, ignorant, avaritious, prodigall person'; but his subsequent doings in Sumatra 2[2] showed that he was of the stuff of which successful merchant adventurers are made, being endowed with restless energy, a clear head, and a way with natives that carried them with him. As the Madras Council sorrowfully put it when lie died in Sumatra in 1687, he was 'a fitting active man among those people.'
The records of 1684 show that the settlement was still very small then, the monthly expenses being only 100 pagodas (Rs. 350),
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