embassy, amounted to 10,000 tons; and many private fortunes were acquired, without injuring the company's trade, or subjecting their estate to disputes with the government. The presidency, nevertheless, found it their interest from time to time to sooth the Nabob with presents, in order to promote the increase of the company's investment, and to facilitate the course of their business at the subordinate factories: but the people of all denominations residing in Calcutta, enjoyed, after the return of the embassy, a degree of independence and freedom unknown to all the other inhabitants of Bengal: who, on the contrary, were oppressed every year with increasing vexations by the rapacity of the Nabob.
In 1718, the year after the embassy, Jaffier received from Delhi the patents he had long solicited, annexing the provinces of BEHAR and ORIXA to his government of Bengal and the reversion of the whole to his heir.
The Ganges, in a course which tends with little deviation from the west to the east point of the compass, flows through the whole province of Behar, and divides it into two regions. The southern extends about 220 miles, from the river Caramnassa to Tacriagully, and is skirted to the south by the chain of mountains which on this side accompanies the course of the Ganges; and several districts belonging to the province are included within the mountains themselves, but none recede more than 60 miles from the river. The river Dewah, which is likewise called the Gogra, joins the Ganges on its northern shore, 180 miles to the west of Tacriagully. That river for a long way before the junction tends to the W. N. w. and 40 miles of the lower part of its channel forms part of the western boundary of the northern division of Behar, which extends to the east 180 miles, to the line we have noted as the limit of Purniah, and recedes from the Ganges and Dewah 90 miles to the north; where forests at the foot of the range of mountains, which bound the country of Napal, continue with the mountains to the eastward far beyond Rangamati, and form the northern boundaries of Behar, Bengal, and Assam. The area of Behar compriseth 9 square degrees. The capital, Patna, stands on the southern bank of
