the war, I have considered it an important duty to as- 

 certain as accurately as possible the extent of their 

 possessions, the nature of their privileges, the means by 

 which they were acquired and the effects which their 

 unqualified or conditional restoration to Holland is likely 

 to have upon the interests of the British Government in 

 this province. 



" When Tuticorin and its dependent factories 

 Poonacoil and Manapaar capitulated to the English in 

 1795, the Dutch were in the actual possession of the 

 chank and pearl fisheries off the coast of the Tinnevelly 

 province, paying half the proceeds to the Nawab. To 

 preserve these fisheries from depredation, they had 

 employed for a series of years a scattered chain of armed 

 boats extending nearly from Cape Comorin to Pamban 

 and the owners of country crafts to avoid vexatious 

 delays which their commerce suffered from the search 

 exercised on all vessels passing these boats, did not 

 hesitate to apply to the Dutch Presidents along the 

 coast for passports under their signature — the possession 

 thereof acquired by the payment of a fee exempted them 

 from this vexatious scrutiny. 



** The landed possessions which the Dutch had 

 acquired on the coast of Tinnevelly did not extend 

 beyond the ground upon which the small fort of Tuticorin 

 is built .... Upon this and other similar occa- 



sions of dispute between the Dutch and the Nawab's 

 manager, the latter did not scruple to refuse to them water 

 and fresh provisions neither of which are of course 

 attainable within the walls of Tuticorin, so that not only 

 their continuance upon this coast in a revenue and 

 commercial character but even their physical existence 

 evidently depends upon the disposition of the ruling 

 authority in Tinnevelly to administer to their wants. 



" The town of Tuticorin which is close upon the 

 fort, the Dutch affected to consider under their jurisdic- 

 tion but the Nawab's Government uniformly opposed 

 this pretension and collected the revenues from the 

 inhabitants residing in it. The grounds upon which 

 they pretended to this assumption of sovereignty over 

 the inhabitants of Tuticorin originates in the majority of 

 the people being of the Parawa caste, a set of men who 

 having been converted to Christianity by the Portuguese 



