lo Voyage of the Novara. 



Ali Khan, a number of plots of ground in the vicinity of 

 Mangalore, Carwar, and Balliaj)atam, the very centre of the 

 peipper trade, and erected a factory at an expense of 28,074 

 florins (£2800), this enterprising man set sail for the Coro- 

 mandel Coast and the Bay of Bengal, and about the com- 

 mencement of 1778 visited the Nicobar Islands, in order there 

 also to found a factory. Unfortunately, of this visit there 

 nowhere survive any detailed particulars, and the only docu- 

 ment extant under Bolts' hand, which can throw any light 

 on the subject, is a statement of the expenditure incurred in 

 erecting a fort on the Nicobars, which, together with the 

 purchase of a goelette, and a snow, or two-masted vessel, for 

 the coasting trade between Madras, Pegu, and the group of 

 islands, amounted to 47,659 fl. 48 kr. (about £4760). 



At the close of 1780 Bolts returned to Europe, and in May, 

 1781, cast anchor in the harbour of Leghorn. His exertions 

 and his speculation had not been attended with the success 

 anticipated, and despite fresh assistance afforded by the Aus- 

 trian Government to the Association, which at first seemed 

 to promise a more auspicious future for the undertaking, yet 

 the political complications of the period, and especially the 

 sudden, totally unlooked-for rupture of peace between France, 

 England, and Holland, ere long entailed utter ruin on the trad- 

 ing company, which, in the year 1785, found itself compelled 

 to stop payment.* Bolts died at Paris in April, 1808, in 



* A few years previous, in 1782, a certain C. F. von Brocktroff, of Kiel, had ad- 

 dressed a memorial to (he Emperor Joseph II., in the course of which he warmly 



