458 Political Events in the Carnatic, from 1564 to 1687. QNo. 150. 



sent, to extend it beyond a rapid sketch. In such documents as exist of 

 our national records, the accounts of the native governments, of their 

 Unsatisfactory, history, politics, and of the geography of the country 

 are vague and unsatisfactory ; indeed our countrymen do not appear to 

 have then conceived it necessary for their views to enquire much fur- 

 ther than what immediately related to their investments and com- 

 merce close to the coast, and an entire indifference, if not ignorance of 

 Occasionally dis- the real state of the country prevailed. At all 



turbed by the trou- . 



bles of the country, times they appear to have been under considerable 

 alarm for the safety of their settlement, and their employers' interests., 

 though not an instance occurs of inhumanity or ill-treatment from the 

 natives, Mahomedan or Hindoo, such as of late years, the irritation of 

 warfare, or the disappointment of ambitious projects may have occa- 

 sionally produced ; and which might then have been supposed with 

 some reason to have excited apprehensions amongst contending nations 

 for their personal safety. Various instances occur of individuals pass- 

 And by conten- i n g safely throughout the country. Among the causes 



tions among the na- 

 tive settlers. of alarm, we find the settlement at times by the 



contentions among the castes and tribes of new settlers, and the whole 



of the working and most useful lower classes induced to abandon the 



new-formed colony, and recurring to a secession to the neighbouring 



settlement of St. Thome, at whose expense most of the population was 



avowedly formed originally. 



78. The settlement of Madras was originally established about A. D. 



No record of the 1639, being transferred thither from Armigam,* 



first 33 years. where the half-finished ruins of their first fort still 



a. p- 1639. remains. Of the founding of the colony, and of the 



A. o. ]5o8. 



A. D. 1672. first 33 years, no records whatever appear. Their first 



attention to the politics of the native powers seems to have been power- 

 fully excited by the sudden appearance of Sevajee so near to Madras; 

 they then deputed an agent to his camp, after whose return they ap- 



* Armigam is situated near Durajapatam on the Coast, 60 miles North of Madras. I had an oppor- 

 tunity of seeing these remains in 1 798, consisting of two small bastions on a single curtain of brick- 

 work of no great extent ; the occasion of the removal is not well known, but it appears that the 

 fort was never finished. The first Grant of Madras by Sree-Runga-Rayel in A. S. 1561 or A. D. 

 1639, was inscribed on a golden olla, which is said to have been lost at the capture of Fort St. George 

 by La Bourdanaye in 1747. 



