Travels in India (Tavernier) 160.3
Travels in India (Ball) 160.3
- Language
- English
160.3.1
I must now return to the Directors and the members of the Company with whom I dined at Middelburg. Most of them desired that I should inform them of the manner in which the agents of the Company behaved in Persia and India, and the others asked me to speak of my travels. I preferred to satisfy the latter, and avoided all reference to trade. It is true that if I had not had some suspicion of the deception which they played me subsequently, I would possibly have told them many things from which they might have derived benefit. For in the space of the forty years during which I have often visited Persia and India, there have been few persons in the service of the Company who have not told me of all the tricks they made use of in order to acquire money. In return for this confidence, when they were about to return home, I endeavoured to furnish them with a good parcel of diamonds, which occupy but little space. If then I had declared to these gentlemen what I knew of this matter, they would have gained much in studying the record I should have given, and by discovering the knavery of their servants, and by doing rightly by me, their conscience would not be charged as it is, concerning the 17,500 florins which General Vanderlin and his Council seized from me at Batavia.
160.3.2
That which astonishes me most is, as I have elsewhere remarked, that when the General and his Council took from me the value of these 17,500 florins, they made a hundred promises that I should be paid immediately I set foot in Holland, but this was not done in spite of all the steps I could take for its accomplishment. For when leaving the feast that was given at Batavia on the departure of the fleet, I took four witnesses of the fact, namely, our Vice-Admiral and three merchants, to whom, when taking leave of the General and Council, I said aloud in their presence that they would be my witnesses if God permitted us to arrive in Holland or Zealand, and would remember that the General and his Council did not give me on my departure that which they had promised, namely, an order which I could show to the Directors of the Company, by which they would see that 17,500 florins were due and payable to me on my arrival. The General’s response was to take a glass of wine and wish me a pleasant journey, assuring me that the order would arrive in Holland before me. The Directors, to justify their refusal to pay me, told me that the General and his Council had written nothing to them concerning the matter, and that when they received an advice of it they would at once pay it.
160.3.3
I was at length obliged to bring an action against them which lasted two years, before I was able to find, either at Amsterdam or the Hague, a notary who would serve a summons, every one fearing them, as they were both judges and parties to the suit. During these two years I often entered their assembly, where they always gave me some hope, but in reality they were laughing at me. I have hardly ever been deceived when looking a man in the face, as I know almost exactly what is in his mind. I remarked that many of these men had the appearance of loving their own interests and caring little for those of others, and among others there was a young man who represented Encuse, who gazed earnestly at me. After having looked at me for some time he asked why I had been at Batavia, where strangers have no business. I replied to him that all these gentlemen were sufficiently acquainted with it, and that as he was the only one who did not know, his beard was too young to oblige me to explain to him. As their procedure annoyed me, and I was enraged at seeing myself treated so unjustly, I added in speaking to this young man that he would do better at Encuse selling his butter and cheese than where he was.
160.3.4
The President interrupted me gently, and told me that I must offend no one, to which I replied that I had seen too much to render an account of my doings in this manner, and that what I did at Goa and Batavia was at the request of the Chief of the factory at Vengurla, and solely for the purpose of rendering a service to the Company. This discourse being finished, the President asked me to go outside for a short time, which I did. Afterwards, having returned, he told me that he still knew nothing about the matter, and that all these gentlemen believed that I would not remain there, but would still make another journey to Asia, and as I praised the good treatment I had received on their vessels on my return voyage, they again offered me a passage, and would give orders that I should be treated even still better than before; that as soon as I arrived at Batavia I should be paid; that they would send an order to that effect to the General and his Council, and that I might embark on the first vessel which left for Surat or Hormuz, I thanked these gentlemen for all their fine offers, and told them that I preferred to make three journeys by land rather than one voyage by sea. In conclusion, at the end of five years the Directors wrote to my brother (for I had then returned to India) that if he was willing to take 10,000 livres in satisfaction of my claim, he might come to receive them. This my brother did, and he gave them a receipt in full.
160.3.5
I leave the reader to judge of the equity and conscience of these gentry. For either they owed me 17,500 florins or they did not. If they did not, why pay me 10,000 livres? And if they did owe me, why not pay me fully. I am not the only person to whom they have done injustice of this kind. I know many other more serious cases, the recital of which would not be to their advantage. Such was my return from India in the year 1649, the only time I returned by sea, having made, as I have said, all my Asiatic journeys by land, both when going and returning, counting as nothing the short passage in the Mediterranean; and my first journey was wholly by land, from Paris by Germany and Hungary to Constantinople, where I also went on the return from my last journey in the year 1669. From Constantinople I went to Smyrna, where I embarked for Leghorn, and from Leghorn I travelled by land to Genoa, from Genoa to Turin, and from Turin to Paris, where I took the King that beautiful parcel of diamonds of which I have spoken in the discourse on precious stones. His Majesty had the goodness to give me a very favourable reception, which was a glorious conclusion to my long journeys, in which I have always had for my primary object to spare nothing in order to make known to the great monarchs of Asia, that there is one grander than them all, in Europe, and that our King infinitely surpasses them both in power and glory.
160.3.6
My first thoughts on finding myself in Paris, on the return from my sixth journey, were to return thanks to God for having preserved me, during the space of forty years, among so many perils which I had run, by sea and land, in regions so far distant.