Storia do Mogor 265.1.7

265.1.7

Yale wrote to Ruhullah Khan on February 7, 1688 (No. 21, p. 191), thanking him. A person of the Council would have been sent had not Shiva Ji's people prevented it by their plundering and seizing the letter-carriers. They cannot travel two leagues out of this town [Madras] without danger to life. Abnus will act for them. Chardin and Rodriguez report, on January 24, 1688, their safe arrival at Bhagnagar (Haidarabad). Abnus had left for Court : what were they to do with the money ? Ruhullah Khan is, they hear, honest but greedy, both in eating and in getting. Five days later they make many complaints of Abnus, after having seen him. They hear he visits the Court more for his own affairs than the Company's, and uses their money for his own purposes. The Mogul was about to leave [? for Bījāpur], and Abnūs would never carry through the negotiation. On his side, Abnūs makes bitter complaint that the Frenchman (Chardin) withholds the money, and the Armenian boasts that he will pledge his own jewels to put the English business through. He did not think an Englishman now required, and great expense would be saved by not sending one.