1892.] C. R. Wilson —Topography of the Hugli in the 1 6th century. Ill 
little water. Every year at Buttor they make and unmake a village 
with houses and shops made of straw, and with all things necessary to 
their uses, and this village standeth as long as the ships ride there, and 
till they depart for the Indies, [i. e., Goa] and when they are departed 
every man goeth to his plot of houses, and there setteth fire on them, 
which thing made me to marvel. For as I passed up to Satagan, I saw 
this village standing with a great number of people, with an infinite 
number of ships and bazars, and at my return coming down with my 
Captain of the last ship, for whom I tarried, I was all amazed to see 
such a place so soon razed and burnt, nothing left but the sign of the 
burnt houses. The small ships go to Satagan and there they lade.” 
Where then was this Betor which it would seem was in 1565 se¬ 
cond only to Satgaon in importance P (a) According to Caesar Frederick, 
it was a good tide’s rowing from Satgaon. ( b ) According to De Barros’ 
map, as interpreted by Blochmann, Betor is somewhere opposite Chitpur. 
(c) The ordinary printed versions of Mukundarama’s Chandi give us 
the following sequence of villages—Chitpur, Salikha, Kalikata, Betar. 
There can be no doubt then that this Betor, the original nursery of 
the trade which was afterwards transplanted to Calcutta, is the Betor 
which lies to the west and south of the modern Sibpur, which is even 
now reverenced as an old sanctuary of the goddess Chandi. 
This identification of Betor leads to many interesting reflections. 
(a) Calcutta, or what is practically the same Betor, is the oldest 
seat of European trade in Bengal, its importance being due to the fact 
that above Betor the river became much shallower, and consequently the 
Portuguese when they first came to Bengal were unwilling to trust their 
ships higher up the river. 
(5) From the coming of the Portuguese in 1530, to their establish¬ 
ment at Hugli in about 1570, Garden Reach was annually crowded with 
Portuguese shipping, and even after 1570 it still remained a favourite 
reach to anchor in, as Mr. T. R. Munro has recently told us. 
(c) It is this early importance of the place which explains why the 
the Setts and Bysacks came and colonised Govindpur and opened Suta- 
nuti Hat, which again led Job Charnock to select Calcutta as the site of 
the English settlement. 
( d ) Critics are wrong when they argue that the main stream of 
the river flowed down Tolly’s Nulla, or the Adi-Gaiiga, as late as the 16th 
century, because in the Chandi Mahgal the voyagers go this way. The 
native boatmen avoided the present course of the river to Hijili, not be¬ 
cause it was too shallow, but because it was too deep : so deep as to be 
readily accessible to the galliasses of the Arracanese pirates, whom the 
voyagers were most anxious to escape. 
