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the government or police of Surat; but they lived in an elegant 
style at their town and country houses, with handsome equipages, 
and suitable attendants. The Dutch factory is the most regular 
and the best built mansion in Surat; the Dutch Company import 
sugar, arrack, and spices, from their settlements in the eastern 
islands; and export a considerable quantity of cotton piece-goods 
manufactured here. The French trade is greatly diminished; and 
the Portugueze, who once commanded the Indian seas, are every 
where on the decline: but the commerce of the English Company 
and private merchants at Surat, is very extensive. 
In the English and Dutch burying-grounds, situated without 
the walls, are some handsome tombs, with domes and pillars in the 
style of the Mahomedan mausoleums; which, interspersed among 
shady trees, give these cemeteries a grand and solemn appear- 
ance. 
The serai, or principal caravansary, at Surat, was much 
neglected: most of the eastern cities contain one at least, for the 
reception of strangers; smaller places, called choultries, are erected 
by charitable persons, or munificent princes, in forests, plains, and 
deserts, for the accommodation of travellers. Near them is gene- 
rally a well, and a cistern for the cattle; a brahmin or fakeer often 
resides there to furnish the pilgrim with food, and the few neces- 
saries he may stand in need of. 
In the deserts of Persia and Arabia, these buildings are inva- 
luable: in those pathless plains, for many miles together, not a 
tree, a bush, nor even a blade of grass, is to be seen; all is one 
undulating; mass of sand, like waves on the trackless ocean. In 
these ruthless wastes, where no rural village, or cheerful hamlet; 
