Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/287

THE ENGLISH SAIL TO HARISHPUR 236 man) of the Golkonda king in 1632 encouraged the Masulipatam factory to send a trading party north- ward. Accordingly in March, 1633, eight Englishmen started in a native " junk," " with a square sail, an oar-like rudder, and a high poop with a thatched house built on it for a cabin," and rolled up the Bay of Ben- gal till they reached the mouths of Mahanadi, literally the " Great River " of Orissa. There, on April 21st, Easter Day, 1633, they cast A NATIVE BOAT OP THB BAT OF BENGAL. anchor inside the mud-banks of the Moghul customs- station of Harishpur on one of the tributaries of the Mahanadi River. The Hindu port-officer or " Rogger " (our sea-captain's rendering of raja) behaved with Indian courtesy to the strangers. But presently, as we know from the account by the ship's captain, Will- iam Bruton, which was published at London five years later, a Portuguese frigate steered into the haven, an- chored close to our half-decked boat, and got up a scuffle on shore, " where our men being oprest by multitudes had like to have been all slaine or spoyled, but that