I must not omit to mention here, an anecdote of baseness or favour, call it which you please.  When the prisons are full of condemned men, the king commands some to be executed, and sends others to his omrahs, to be redeemed at a price.  This he esteems a courtesy, as giving the means of exercising charity:  But he takes the money, and so sells the virtue.  About a month before our remove, he sent to me to buy three Abyssinians, whom they suppose to be all Christians, at the price of forty rupees each.  I answered, that I could not purchase men as slaves, as was done by others, by which they had profit for their money; but that I was willing to give twenty rupees each for them in charity, to save their lives and restore them to liberty.  The king was well pleased with my answer, and ordered them to be sent me.  They expected the money, which I was in no haste to give, and even hoped it had been forgotten.  But the king’s words are all written down[217], and are as irrevocable decrees.  Seeing that I sent not for the malefactors, his officers delivered them into the hands of my procurator, in my absence this day, taking his note for the sixty rupees, which I paid at my return, and set free the prisoners.

[Footnote 217:  Dixit, et edictum est; fatur, et est factum.—­Purch.]

Having notice of a new phirmaund sent down to Surat to disarm all the English, and some other restrictions upon their liberty, owing to a complaint sent up to the prince, that we intended to build a fort at Swally, and that our ships were laden with bricks and lime for that purpose, I visited Asaph Khan on the 10th November, to enquire into this matter.  This jealousy arose from our people having landed a few bricks on shore, for building a furnace to refound the ship’s bell; yet the alarm was so hot at court, that I was called to make answer, when I represented how absurd was this imaginary fear, how dishonourable for the king, and how unfit the place was for any such purpose to us, having neither water nor harbourage.  The jealousy was however so very strongly imprinted in their minds, because I had formerly asked a river at Gogo for that purpose, that I could hardly satisfy the prince but that we intended some such sinister end.  You may judge from this how difficult it were to get a port for yourselves, if you were so disposed.  Notwithstanding all remonstrances, this furnace must be demolished, and a huddey of horse sent down to see it done.  The disarming of our men was what chiefly disobliged our people, though the weapons were only lodged in the custom-house, and those only belonging to the ship’s company.  I told Asaph Khan, that we could not endure this slavery, nor would I stay longer in the country, as the prince gave us one day a phirmaund for our good usage, with a grant of privileges, and countermand all the next by contradictory orders, in which proceedings there was neither honour nor good faith, and I could not answer for my continuing to reside among them.  Asaph Khan said, he would speak to the king at night on the subject, in the presence of the prince, and afterwards give me an answer.