A History of Agriculture in India v2.c75.s7.2

v2.c75.s7.2

Stevens is famous as the first Englishman known to have set foot on Indian soil. Born in Wiltshire and educated in Winchester, he made his way to Rome and there entered the Jesuit order. Being desirous of serving in India, he obtained a passage at Lisbon in the spring of 1579 and reached Goa in October of that year. He was the first European to make a scientific study of Konkani, and he wrote two religious works, one of which was a long epic in Marathi. Describing a visit to Malabar he mentions a number of crops including pepper and coconut. ‘Here grows the pepper; and it springs up by a tree or a pole, and is like our ivy berry, but something longer, and at the first the bunches are green, and as they wax ripe they cut them off and dry them. The leaf is much lesser than the ivy leaf and thinner. All the inhabitants here have very little houses covered with the leaves of the coco-trees. All the pepper of Calicut and coarse cinnamon grows here in this country. The best cinnamon comes from Ceylon, and is pilled from the young trees. Here are very many palm or coco-trees, which is their chief food; for it is their meat and drink, and yields many other necessary things.’⁴