whose exploitation offered openings of a promising kind to a great commercial organization of the character of the East India Company. To such a quarter it was inevitable that the English should sooner or later turn their serious attention.
Even before the title deeds of Fort St. George were secured, an English expedition intent on finding new openings for trade had penetrated to Bengal. It was an unassuming little venture, in which only eight Englishmen took part, but it has its place in history as the first intrusion of an organized body of representatives of the now ruling race into the most important of the Indian provinces.
The story of the journey is set forth for the benefit of posterity by a certain William Benton "of the parish of St. Saviour's, Southwark," quartermaster of the Company's ship Hopewell, who accompanied the party as navigating adviser. Starting in the early part of 1633 the expedition penetrated as far as Fort Barabati, the seat of the Court of Malcandy, or Mukund Deo, the last of the indigenous Kings of Orissa. The ruling Mogul, Viceroy Agha Mahommed Zaman, a Persian, received the visitors graciously, but he was not disposed to forego the customary court etiquette which consisted of a kissing of the viceroyal toe as a preliminary to conversation. Cartwright, the leader of the party, when the toe was insinuatingly uncovered, twice declined the suggestion that he should salute it, but eventually, with a wry face, "he was fain to do it." Agha Mahommed, however, was not at all a bad specimen of the Mogul dignitary. He treated the Englishmen most kindly and gave them permission to trade. Acting under his grant Cartwright started factories at Hariharapur and Balasor, and for some years these were centres of the Com-
