1912.) Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. CXXXix 
It is this very MS., written in prison at Senaa in 1590, 
which Calcutta may now glory to possess. 
Monserrate and Paes’ captivity lasted six years and a half. 
Ransomed in August 1596, they wrote from Goa to Rome in 
December 1596, announcing their deliverance, and Akbar was 
not a little wroth at the conduct of the Arabs, when Fr. Jerome 
Xavier read to him a letter of Monserrate, detailing what 
they had suffered. p 
There can be little doubt that Monserrate brought back to 
India this precious MS., or rather, by this time, he had col- 
at the end of his captivity in Arabia, or after his return to 
Goa—-since he refers to events of 1595, which he could hardly 
have learnt in Arabia—he wrote in his preface that the small 
appendix he had composed on the Natural History of India 
and the customs of the ‘‘ ancient aborigines and indigenes ”’ 
had now become a book. ‘‘I have divided the work into two 
criptions of cities, tombs and ruined temples, his excursions 
into the history of the past, or his considerations on Indian 
manners and customs. He wished to do away with these 
hors-d’ euvre, as he considered them, and worked them out with 
other materials in Bk. II, the ‘‘ appendix.” Unfortunately , 
Bk. II remains to be discovered. 
None of these 4 volumes was known to our bibliographers, 
or to the biographers of Monserrate and Bl. Rudolph Aqua- 
viva. No other copy of the Calcutta MS. is known to exist in 
hors d’ wuvre, they are of paramount interest to the historian 
and the antiquarian, and detract little, if at all, from the con- 
tinuity of the story. 
