[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [General history and culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general) › [The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.fleet-1882) › c7.s9.262 # The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c7.s9.262 The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c7.s9.262 - **Language:** English ### [c7.s9.262](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.fleet-1882.c7.s9.262) Sálsette, our next acquisition, which had been so prosperous under the Portuguese and so fertile as to have supplied not only the neighbouring islands but Goa also,¹ appears to have been in 1818, after forty years of our government, little, if any, better than those districts just taken from the Maráthás. In 1787 Dr. Hové for the space of twelve miles saw no village nor marks of present culture: remains of large buildings testified to its former prosperity, but all was now "pining in decay. Here and there are remains of wells and marks of former culture, but no person now thinks culture an honourable employment." An intelligent writer in 1794 mentioned with approval a proposal that had been made a few years before to establish a colony of Chinese in the island.² In 1804 Lord Valentia found that little had been done to increase the produce of the island, the greater part being useless jungle, and even wood being only procurable at a very high price, owing chiefly to want of arrangement.³ In 1811 the Secretary to the Bombay Government wrote of "the present half-populated and half-cultivated state of Sálsette."⁴ And in 1824 Bishop Heber speaks of Sálsette as "strangely unimproved neglected and uncivilised, having no towns except Thána and Ghodbandar, very little cultivation except the tara palm and cocoanut, which grow almost spontaneously amid the jungle, and displaying in the cottages of its peasantry a degree of poverty and rudeness which I have seen nowhere in India except among the Bhils,"⁵ A striking description of the wildness of the inhabitants is also given in Hamilton's Gazetteer. - [Previous: c7.s9.261](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.fleet-1882.c7.s9.261) - [Next: c7.s9.263](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.fleet-1882.c7.s9.263) - [Up: c7.s9](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.fleet-1882.c7.s9) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.fleet-1882.c7.s9.262](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.fleet-1882.c7.s9.262) · Pramāṇa