CHAPTER XIV. 



INTERLOPERS AND INTERLOPING, 

 is not very many decades since the above words 

 were unknown in India, or if known at all, they 

 had no application to Indigo. At the opening 

 of the present century, indigo the Devil's Dye of 

 the credulous of those days was still in its infancy, 

 and the pioneer of its progress had to be imported 

 from the West Indies. Doubtless even then the few 

 and scattered servants of " John Company " may have 

 looked askance at the intruder, who, the protecting 

 segis of letters patent notwithstanding, had the pluck 

 and hardihood to entertain and prosecute the five years' 

 scheme a tentative one of the magnates of Lead- 

 enhall. Jealous enough of adventurers of all sorts 

 refusing permission to settle in India unless in rare 

 exceptions except under pledge and bond not to 

 adhere to the strict letter of which was disaster 

 deporting from India at a moment's notice, and 

 all property and goods confiscated by the Company, 

 the Hon'ble Company was not always sufficiently 

 alive to its position to welcome and foster an element 

 in its population which came adorned with the 

 triple armour of English pluck, capital, and intrepidity. 



