Travels in India (Tavernier) 31.1.4

31.1.4

If it should happen that they spend too long a time in finding the man whom they wish to murder, and are unable to meet with him in the fields or in the town, then without the slightest regard for sacred things they slay him at the altar; and I have myself seen two examples of this — one at Damān, and the other at Goa. Three or four of these black slaves having perceived some persons whose lives they wanted to take, and who were attending mass in a church, discharged blunderbusses at them through the windows, without reflecting whether they might not wound others who had no part in the quarrel. It happened so at Goa, and there were seven men slain near the altar, the priest who was saying mass having been seriously wounded. The law takes no cognisance of these crimes, because generally their authors are the first in the land. As for trials, they never come to an end. They are in the hands of the Kanarins who are natives of the country, who practice the professions of solicitors and procurators, and there are no people in the world more cunning and subtle. To return to the ancient power of the Portuguese in India, it is certain that if the Dutch had never come to India you would not have found to-day a scrap of iron in the majority of the houses of the Portuguese;