T A V 



107 



T A V 



Gombroon, where he embarked for Surat. He visited 

 Agra on this occasion ; but here again we are at a loss fo 

 - to enable us to trace his routes. We only know 

 that he passed through Burhampore on his return from 

 i to Surat in 1641 ; that he visited Goa and returned to 

 Surat by land about the end of that year ; and that he was 

 t Ahmedabad, either going to or returning from Agra, in 

 1642. That he had revisited Ispahan in the interval is no' 

 improbable, since he says that ' for six journeys which ] 

 " made between Paris and Ispahan, I have made twice 

 as many from Ispahan to Agra and other parts of the 

 Great Mogul'l dominions.' He was at Ispahan towards the 

 close of the year 1042 ; and probably soon alter returned 

 to France. On his third voyage he took with him the 

 brother already alluded to, and left Paris on the 6th ol 

 December, 1643. This time, after visiting Ispahan as 

 usual, he embarked at Gombroon for India. In January, 

 1645. he left Surat on an excursion to the diamond-mines 

 near Golconda. In January, 1648, he made a voyage by sea 

 to Goa ; and in April of the same year he embarked at 

 Mingvela for Batavia ; whence he returned to Europe in 

 the Dutch fleet in 1649. Tavernier's fourth journey occu- 

 1'i'd him from the 18th of June, 1651, when he set out 

 from Paris, till 1G55. On this occasion he proceeded from 

 na to Masulipatan, in May, 1652; he revisited the 

 diamond-mines near Golconda in 1653, and in 1654 he tra- 

 velled from Ormuz to Kerman, and after spending three 

 months there, took the route of Yezd to Ispahan, and re- 

 turned to Europe by Smyrna. His fifth journey was begun 

 in February, 1656. He was at Agra in 1659,' but we are 

 at a loss for other dates in this journey. The sixth and 

 last expedition that Tavernier made to the East was begun 

 in November, 1663, and was terminated in 1669. The 

 important novelty of this journey was his tour 

 through the province of Bengal as far as Dacca, which 

 occupied him from November. 1605, till July or August, 

 Kilili. He WHS at Ispahan in July, 1G67, and on his return 

 to Ki i rope visited Constantinople for the second time. 



The very unsatisfactory arrangement adopted in the 

 narrative of Tavernier's journeys has rendered it advisable 

 ' met from it the preceding incomplete chronology of 

 them. His first publication was an account of the in- 

 terior of the seraglio at Constantinople (Nnurrllt Rplntinn 

 i! I'lntcrii'iir tin X;vw// , published at Paris, in a thin 4to 

 volume, in 1(>75. This was followed by an account of his 

 travi ,'ti T/i/-i^" ", et aux I/id' a . 



;:t Paris, in two quarto volumes, in 1676. A third 

 volume was added in 16~9, containing an account ol 

 Japan and the origin of the pcix-ciition of the Christians 

 in these islands ; an account of the proceedings of the 

 deputies from the king and the French company of the 

 Indies both in Persia and India ; observations on the com- 

 mcree of the East Indies: account of the kingdom of 

 Tunquin ; account of the conduct of the Dutch in Asia. 

 In preparing the account of the Seraglio and the two first 

 volumes of his Travels, Tavernier employed Chappuzeau, a 

 dull and unintelligent writer : the memoirs contained in 

 the third volume were prepared by Lachapelle, secretary 

 to the president Lamaignon. The account of the seraglio, 

 and the contents of the third volume of the travels, are 

 partly memoirs compiled from the information of others, 

 and partly more full expositions of topics touched upon in 

 his narrative. It is to the first two volumes of Tavernier's 

 travels that we must look for such information of the 

 countries he visited, the time he spent in them, and the 

 adventures he encountered, as is necessary to enable us to 

 mine what, he witnessed himself, what he learned 

 from the report of others, how far his informants were 

 worthy of belief, and how far he was qualified to under- 

 I their communications. Hut the arrangement of 

 two volumes is the very worst that could be con- 

 I i'ir supplying satisfactory information upon these 

 -. The first volume professes to give an account of 

 the various routes by which the Parisian traveller can 

 -tantinople, Ispahan, and the Persian Gulf. It 

 is arranged ai a rimtirr ; the result of all Tavernier's ob- 

 'ipon each line of road is given at once, and it 

 is only from incidental remarks that we learn when and in 

 'ion he travelled it. His remarks upon the 

 nient, and commerce of the different coun- 

 irown into intercalary chapters. A similar ar- 

 I in Ins second volume, which con- 

 tain.-, ' , ;s in the south of India, in 



the region between Surat and Delhi, in Bengal, and in the 

 Dutch possessions in the Eastern Archipelago. The work 

 is neither a systematic account of the geography and sta- 

 tistics oi the countries in which Tavernier travelled nor is 

 it a personal narrative of the traveller. It is 'an ill- 

 digested and unsatisfactory attempt to combine both. 



Yet are the four volumes we have mentioned full of 

 available matter, both for the historian and the geogra 

 pher. The former will find in it the fruits of the forty 

 years' experience and observation of a European merchant 

 in Turkey, Persia, India, and the Indian Archipelago, in 

 the seventeenth century. Tavernier did not possess either 

 the intellect or the education of Thdvenot and Bernier, 

 but his opportunities of observation were more varied and 

 protracted. He was a part of that commercial enterprise 

 and rivalry of which they were only spectators. He is 

 himself a specimen of the kind of adventurers who at that 

 time managed the commerce of Europe with the East. 

 His unconscious revelations of his own character may be 

 relied upon, and the naivete with which they are made 

 encourages us to believe what he tells us of others. His 

 statements have not passed unchallenged : they wounded 

 the national pride of the Dutch too sore to be left without 

 a reply, and the partisan feelings of the Protestant literati 

 of Europe induced them to embrace the cause of Holland 

 in opposition to the prottgt of Louis XIV. Even the 

 Catholic literati took little interest in a writer who frankly 

 confessed that he saw nothing interesting or valuable in 

 the plain of Troy or the ruins of Persepolis. And yet 

 notwithstanding the violent attacks of the Dutch and Cal- 

 vinist writers, the silence of others, and even of himself 

 (for Tavernier did not engage in a controversy), not one 

 naterial assertion he made has been disproved. Unfriendly 

 criticism has been confined to the remark that many of 

 lis statements regarding the Dutch are trivial, and betray 

 i littleness of mind: this maybe, but they are not the less 

 characteristic for that reason. Tavernier's accounts of the 

 principal objects of Oriental commerce in his day, of the 

 eading markets and routes of trade, of the money of the 

 different countries, and the state of the exchanges, are 

 more full and intelligible than those we find in any other 

 cotemporary writer. His success in trade affords a gua- 

 antee of the correctness of the opinions he states. We 

 lave collated his routes, whenever this was possible, with 

 'hose of recent travellers, and have found them in general 

 ;o accurate, that they may be relied upon for the purposes 

 of comparative geography, and in one or two instances as 

 xftbrding information regarding tracts which have not 

 seen visited since his time. Tavernier's notices of the 

 oute from Casvin to India by Candahar, and of the pro- 

 i'K-rs to the north of Erivan, leave a favourable impres- 

 ion of his talent for extracting information from the 

 native authorities. He has been accused of plagiarism, 

 mncipally because of the striking coincidence between his 

 iccount of the Guebres of Kerman, published in 1676, and 

 hat which Louis Moreri published in 1671 from the papers 

 if Father Gabriel de Cninon. It deserves to be noticed 

 hat Moreri's publication is lucidly arranged and neatly 

 expressed, while the account contained in Tavernier's 

 ravels is confused and miserable in point of diction. Had 

 t been taken from Moreri,it is scarcely possible that the lat- 

 er could have been so wretchedly composed. Add to this 

 hat the information found in the papers of Father Gabriel 

 s not said to have been the fruit of personal observation ; 

 hat Tavernier resided three months among the Guebres 

 at Kirman, and had frequent dealings with them in India 

 and elsewhere ; that he and Father Gabriel repeatedly 

 met in Persia ; and it must be allowed that the priest is 

 quite as likely to have derived his information from the 

 merchant as otherwise. In judging of the statements 

 made by Tavernier, the school in which he was trained, 

 and his personal character as it appears from his own 

 story, must always be kept in view. He had no knowledge 

 of or taste for science and literature, for art, or antiquarian 

 research. He acted upon impulse, and his instincts were 

 love of travelling, and desire to acquire money for the 

 sake of spending it in feasting and personal display. A 

 diamond was a more interesting object, to him than the 

 i ious remains of Tchelminar. He had no very nice 

 or refined sense of honour, but he was frank and veracious, 

 and little inclined to deck himself with stolen feathers of 

 ure ; possibly because he could not appreciate their 

 value. 



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