climate temperate, many persons frequent it, and all are great merchants, who possess large ships made like those of Mecca, and some like those of China, called Giunchi, which are very large, and carry large cargoes, and with these they navigate towards Coromandel, Malabar, Cambaia, Tarnasseri, Sumatra, Zeilam, and Malaca, and they trade with all kinds of merchandize from one place to the other." RAMUSIO, vol. i. p. 315.

The foregoing extract, taken in conjunction with Varthema's narrative, is satisfactory evidence that a city called Banghella or Bengala existed at this period, that it was a seaport of considerable trade, and was situated beyond the Hooghly, at the head of the gulf known in those days as the Gulf of Bengal. It is remarkable that Barbosa makes no allusion whatever either to Satigan or Chatigam, (Satgong and Chittagong;) but in the Sommario de' Regni, etc., as given by Ramusio, the former place is mentioned under the name of Asedegam, and some further particulars are supplied respecting the city of Bengala. After describing the kingdom of Bengala, the author subjoins:

"Of the seaports of the kingdom, the principal is in the city of Bengala, from which the kingdom takes its name. One goes in two days from the mouth of the Ganges to the city, which [Mouth of the Ganges] now goes by the name of Sino Gangetico or Gulf of Bengal, and in the best roadsteads the water is three braccia deep. The city contains about 40,000 hearths, and the king has a residence there at all times, which is the only one covered with tiles, and is built with well-made bricks.

"There is also another port, called Asedegam, towards the kingdom of Orixa, which is a good port, with a wide en

trance, where there is a good and wealthy city, containing many merchants, and about 10,000 hearths. These are the principal mercantile cities of Bengala." RAMUSIO, vol. i. p. 333.

As far as my researches go, these are the only circumstantial accounts which we possess of the ancient Bengala, subsequent to which I find it mentioned by Purchas and Mandelslo, but by no other writers. Mandelslo does not appear to have visited it personally, and merely enumerates it among the principal cities of the then kingdom of Bengal. (See a quotation from his Voyages in the note on p. 211.) Purchas has the following:

"The kingdome of Bengala is very large, and hath of coast one hundred and twentie leagues, and as much within land. Francis Fernandes measureth it from the confines of the kingdome of Ramu or Porto Grande [Chittagong] to Palmerine, ninety miles beyond Porto Pequene, in all six hundred miles long. The river Chaberis, (which some call Guenga, and think it to be the ancient Ganges,) watereth it it is plentiful in rice, wheat, sugar, ginger, long-pepper, cotton and silke, and enjoyeth a very wholesome ayre. The inhabitants neere the shoare are, (for the most part,) Mahumetans, and so also was the king, before the Great Mogore, (one likewise of his owne sect,) conquered him. Gouro, the seat royall, and Bengala, are faire cities. Of this, the Gulfe, sometimes called Gangeticus, now beareth name Golfo di Bengala. Chatigan is also reckoned amongst these cities." Voyages, vol. v. p. 508.

Of the travellers subsequent to Barbosa, Cæsar Fredericke (A.D. 1563) represents Satigan as a flourishing commercial port, and locates it 120 miles from the mouth of the Ganges (Hooghly,) but he does not

allude either to Bengala or Chatigam. (RAMUSIO, vol. i. p. 392.) Ralph Fitch, twenty years later, describes both Satagan and Chatigan, and tells us that Chutigan was called "Porto Grande" by the Portuguese; but he says nothing about Bengala. In Hamilton's time, A.D. 1688-1723, the town of Hooghly appears to have succeeded Satigan as the chief seaport on the western branch of the Ganges, for he represents the former as "driving a great trade, because all foreign goods are brought thither for import, and all goods of the product of Bengal are brought hither for exportation," which circumstance sufficiently accounts for his not naming Satigan. "Chittagoung, or, as the Portuguese call it, Xatigam," he describes at some length, but he never mentions the city of Bengala, which the earlier writers located at no great distance from that town. (See PINKERTON, vol. ix. p. 414-16. Vol. viii. p. 415.)

Turning from the travellers to the historians of the period under review, one is surprised to find the same omission. De Barros, as quoted by Ramusio, in describing the Ganges, says:—

"Its first mouth, which is on the West, is called Satigan, from a city of that name situated in its streams, where our people carry on their mercantile transactions. The other, which is on the East, comes out very near another and more famous port called Chatigam, which is frequented by most of the merchants who arrive at and depart from this kingdom." RAMUSIO, vol. i. p. 390.

De Faria y Souza is equally explicit with regard to Satigan and Chatigan, but never alludes to Ben

gala. After indicating the line of coast between the Hooghly and the eastern branch of the Ganges, he writes:

"Within this interval is contained the Bay of Bengala, called by some Sinus Gangeticus, because the river Ganges, after watering the country of Bengala, falls into this bay about the latitude of 23 degrees. Though the river

Ganges has many mouths, the two most remarkable are called Satigan to the west, and Chatigan on the east, near one hundred leagues distant from each other."

"This river [Ganges] has its springs in the mountains of Great Tartary, from whence it runs to the southward near 600 leagues, and divides India into two parts, Intra and Extra Gangem. In the mouth that falls into the sea to the eastward is the city Chatigam, on that to the westward Satigam. The principal city is Gouro, seated on the banks of Ganges, three leagues in length, containing one million two hundred thousand families, and well fortified." Portuguese Asia, translated by STEVENS, vol. i. pp. 96-97, 416-17.

The absence of all allusion to Bengala by travellers and historians generally subsequent to Varthema and Barbosa, with the exception of Mandelslo and Purchas, is the more remarkable from the fact of its appearance, together with Chatigam, in most of the early maps of Asia and of India, and its reproduction by succeeding cartographers for nearly two centuries later. The following is a list of the principal maps belonging to the British Museum, arranged in chronological order, wherein both cities are noted:

To the above I may add that in the map of India Orientalis attached to Patavino's Geography, (date, A.D. 1597,) Bengala is marked as a town situated at the head of the gulf, on the right bank of the eastern mouth of the Ganges. It also occupies the same position in Hondius his Map of the East Indies, as given in Vol. i. of Purchas.

The following cartographers, immediately succeeding Ottens, omit the city of Bengala, and the name does not reappear in any map of a subsequent date:

1 This is most probably the map referred to by Colonel Yule, (see p. lxxx. ante.) He writes the author's name Bleau, misprinted Blean; but in the copy of the map in the British Museum it is spelt as above.