factory at Ganjam,
the most eastern town in the province or kingdom of Golconda, situated
in a country abounding with rice and sugar-canes. Still farther to
the north coast, in the latitude of twenty-two degrees, the company
maintains a factory at Balasore, which was formerly very considerable;
but hath been of very little consequence since the navigation of the
river Huguely Avas improved. At this place every European ship bound for
Bengal and the Ganges takes in a pilot. The climate is not counted very
salubrious; but the adjacent country is fruitful to admiration, and here
are considerable manufacture of cotton and silk. Without skilful pilots,
the English would find it very difficult to navigate the different
channels through which the river Ganges discharges itself into the sea
at the bottom of the bay of Bengal. On the southern branch is a town
called Pepely, where there was formerly an English factory, but this was
removed to Huguely, one hundred and sixty miles farther up the river;
a place which, together with the company's settlement at Calcutta, were
the emporiums of their commerce for the whole kingdom of Bengal. Indeed
Huguely is now abandoned by the English, and their whole trade
centers at Calcutta or Fort William, which is a regular fortification,
containing lodgings for the factors and writers, store-houses for the
company's merchandise, and magazines for their ammunition. As for the
governor's house, which likewise stands within the fort, it is one of
the most regular structures in all India. Besides these settlements
along the sea-coast of the peninsula, and on the banks of the Ganges,
the English East India company possess certain inland fac tories
and posts for the convenience and defence of their commerce, either
purchased of the nabobs and rajahs, or conquered in the course of the
war. As the operations we propose to record were confined to the coasts
of Malabar and Coromandel, or the interior countries which form the
peninsula intra Gangem, it will be unnecessary to describe the factory
at Bencoolen, on the island of Sumatra, or any settlement which the
English possess in other parts of the East Indies.

{GEORGE II. 1727-1760}

DISPUTE ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT OF ARCOT.

In order to understand the military transactions of the English company
in India, the reader will take notice, that immediately after the peace
of Aix-la-Chapelle, mons. Dupleix, who commanded for the French in that
country