OF THE KINGDOM OF BENGALE        439

necessary of life; and it is this abundance that has
induced so many Portuguese, Half-castes} and other
Christians, driven from their different settlements by the
Dutch, to seek an asylum in this fertile kingdom. The
Jesuits and Augustins, who have large churches and are
permitted the free and unmolested exercise of their
religion, assiu-ed me that Ogouli alone contains from eight
to nine thousand Christians, and that in other parts of the
kingdom their number exceeded five-and-twenty thousand.
The rich exuberance of the countiy, together with the
beauty and amiable disposition of the native women, has
given rise to a proverb in common use among the
Portuguese, English, and Dutch, that the Kingdom of Bengale
has a hundred gates open for entrance, but not one for
departure.

In regard to valuable commodities of a nature to attract
foreign merchants, I am acquainted with no country
where so great a variety is found. Besides the sugar I
have spoken of, and which may be placed in the list of
valuable commodities, there is in Bengale such a quantity
of cotton and silks, that the kingdom may be called the
common storehouse for those two kinds of merchandise,
not of Hindoustan or the Empire of the Great Mogol only,
but of all the neighbouring kingdoms, and even of Europe.
[ have been sometimes amazed at the vast quantity of
cotton cloths, of eveiy sort, fine and coarse, white and
coloured, which the Hollanders alone export to different
places, especially to Japan and Eurojie. The English, the
Portuguese, and the native merchants deal also in these
articles to a considerable extent. The same may be said
of the silks and silk stuff's of all sorts. It is not possible
to conceive the quantity drawn every year from Bengale
for the supply of the whole of the Mogol Empire, as far
as Lahor and Cabot, and generally of all those foreign
nations to which the cotton cloths are sent. The silks
are not certainly so fine as those of Persia, Syria, Sayd,
! Mestices, in the original.