The factors at first thought so poorly of their new possession, that, in 1668, they proposed to the Surat Council that Bombay should be given up, and the factory moved to Janjira rock.
[Grant Duff, 99.] But soon after, they began to esteem it a place of more consequence than they had formerly thought.' [Anderson, 56; Low's Indian Navy, I.61.]
Under the able management of Gerald Aungier (1660-1677)
the revenue rose from £6500 to £9260 and the population from ten thousand to sixty thousand, while the military force was increased to four hundred Europeans and 1500 Portuguese native militia. [Of the £6500 of revenue in 1667, £2000 were from the land. The Portuguese quit-rents were supposed to represent one-fourth of the crop. Brace's Annals, III. 106.]
In 1674 the traveller Fryer found the weak Government house, which under the Portuguese had been famous chiefly for its beautiful garden, loaded with cannon and strengthened by carefully guarded ramparts. Outside the fortified house, were the English burying-place and fields where cows and buffaloes grazed. At a short distance from the fort lay the town, in which confusedly lived the English, Portuguese, Topazes, Gentoos, Moors, and Koli Christians mostly fishermen. The town was about a mile in length with low houses, roofed with palm-leaves, all but a few left by the Portuguese and some built by the Company. There was a ' reasonable handsome' bazar, and at the end next the fort, a pretty house and church of the Portugals with orchards of Indian fruit.
A mile further up the harbour was a great fishing town, with a Portuguese church and religious house.;
then Parel
with another church and estates belonging to the Jesuits.
At Mahim
he Portuguese had a complete church and house, the English a pretty customs-house and guard-house, and the Moors a tomb. The north and north-west were covered with cocoas, jacks, and mangoes. In the middle was Varli with an English watch.
Malabar hill
was a rocky wooded mountain, with, oh its seaward slops, the remains of a stupendous pagoda [Fryer's New Account, 61-70. Stones of this old temple are still preserved near the Valukeshvar reservoir.] Of the rest of the island; 40,000 acres of what might have been good land was salt marsh. In
Kamathipura
here was water enough for boats, and at high tides the waves flooded the present
Bhendi Bazar
and flowed in a salt stream near the temple of Mumbadevi. Once a day Bombay was a group of islets, and the spring-tides destroyed all but the barren hills. [Brace's Annals, II. 215; Anderson, 53,54; Hamilton's Description of Hindustan, II. 154.]
Ten years more of fair prosperity were followed by about twenty years of deep depression (1688-1710). Then, after the union of the London and the English Companies, there came a steady, though at first slow, advance. But for fifty years more the English gained no fresh territory, and, except at sea, took no part in the struggles between the Moghals, Marathas, Sidis, Angrias, and Portuguese. [Of the position of the English in Bombay, Fryer wrote in 1673: ' Our present concern is with the Portugals, Shivaji, and the Moghal. From the first is desired no more than a mutual friendship, from the second an appearance only, from the last a nearer commerce. The first and second become necessary for provisions for the belly and building, the third for the gross of onr trade. Wherefore offices of civility must be performed to each of these: but they, sometimes interfering, are the occasion of jealousies, these three being so diametrically opposite one to another. For, while the Moghal brings his fleet either to winter or to recruit in this bay, Sevatakes offence: on the other hand, the Moghal would soon put a stop to all business should he be denied. The Portugals, in league with neither, think it a mean compliance in us to allow either of them countenance, especially to furnish them with guns and weapons to turn upon Christians which they wisely make an Inquisition crime. New Account, 70. What the King gave was the 'port, island, and premises, including all rights, territories, appurtenances, royalties, revenues, rents, customs, castles, forts, buildings, fortifications, privileges, franchises, and hereditaments.' Russel's Statutes of the East India Company, Appendix VIII. ix. The English, says Baldseus (1666), thought they' had obtained an all-powerful treasure, though, indeed, Bombay has brought them nothing but trouble and loss. Malabar and Coromandel Coast. Churchill, III. 540.]
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