1896. | E. D. Maclagan—Jeswit Missions to the Emperor Akbar. 55 
The ambassador, we are told,! reached Goa too late in the season 
to be embarked for Lisbon, and while waiting at Goa he contrived 
excuses for postponing his departure to Kurope, until ultimately he found 
it necessary to return from Goa to Akbar’s Court without achieving the 
object of his embassy. 
Meanwhile, even in the hour of failure Aquaviva did not himself 
abandon hope. Here for instance, is an extract from a letter which he 
wrote to his uncle, then General of the Order, at the very time that the 
Embassy was leaving Fathpur.? 
‘First,’ he writes, ‘the Emperor is ina more hopeful state than here- 
tofore : he desires to know our faith and attends to it with greater diligence 
than at first, showing much affection thereto though impediments also are 
not lacking. And the love and familiarity with which he treats us leave 
nothing to be desired. 2. We hope to see some fruit from the Emperor’s 
second son, Pahari, a boy of 13 years of age, who is learning the Portuguese 
language, and therewith the things relating to our faith, and who shows 
himself well disposed thereto, and who is of great natural genius and has 
good inclination. Father Monserrat was his teacher, and now Iam. 3. We 
have discovered a new nation of heathen, called Bottan | Pathan] which is 
beyond Lahor toward the river Indus, a nation very well inclined and 
given to pious works.* They are white men and Muhammadans (Mori) 
do not live among them, wherefore we hope that, if two earnest Fathers 
are sent thither, a great harvest of other heathen may be reaped. 4. There 
is here an old man,# the father of the Hmperor’s Secretary, in whom he 
confides in matters of faith. He has left the world and is of great virtue 
and given to much contemplation of divine things, whence he appears dis- 
posed to receive the light of our faith. He is very friendly to us and listens 
to our faith and we have already visited him several times at his house, 
with much consolation. 5. Where we are is the true India, and this realm 
is but a ladder which leads to the greater part of Asia; and now that the 
Society has’ obtained a footing, and is so favoured by so great an Emperor 
and by his sons, it seems not fitting to leave it before trying all possible 
means to commence the conversion of the Continent of India: seeing that 
all that has so far been done has been merely on the sea coast.’ 
1 Bartoli, Missione, p. 72. 
2 Letter, dated April 1582. Bartoli, Misstone, p. 70. 
3 De Sousa Or. Cong. II. 171, quotes another description of the Pathans which he 
ascribes to Monserrat. It seems more faithful than that given above, for it states 
among other things that the Pathans have such a fear of polluting the pure element 
of water that they never apply it to their bodies. There seems in the books of the 
period to be some confusion between Pathans and Bhiutamis, see e.g., Wheeler’s 
Purchas, p. 14. 
4 This is apparently none other than Shaikh Mubarak father of Abu-l-fazl. He 
was then 79 years old and did not die till eleven years later in 1593 (Blochm, din, 
p. 18). 
