munities are testified to by Bernier and other writers who visited India at this period. In the case of seamen especially it was a fruitful source of mortality as it is unfortunately still to-day amongst the careless Jacks of the mercantile marine who are stranded for a period in one or other of the great Indian ports.
If Bacchus was at times unduly worshipped the gods of learning and literature were not entirely neglected. There is evidence in the correspondence of the period that men kept up their acquaintance with the classics, and that they took a real pleasure in intellectual pursuits. At the Surat factory, quite early in its history, a library was formed with the Company's assistance. The collection of books furnished was, perhaps, not exactly of the kind which would have appealed to the tastes of the average man. What it was like may be gathered from a communication from Sir George Oxenden to the directors in the year 1666. "Your library here," wrote the President, "is carefully looked after and preserved, and we could wish it were better furnished with books. It consists for the main of English treatises and is almost totally defurnisht of the works of the ancient writers. We find none of the Fathers' works, any more than the Epistles of Clemens Romanus. Here are Epistles of Ignatius. The works of Epiphanius and St. Augustine, with some imperfect pieces of other Fathers, only belonging to a private library."
The suggestion made as to the deficiencies of this Surat library conveys rather a terrifying impression of the reading tastes of that far-off Anglo-India. Nor does it appear that addiction to "heavy" literature was a peculiarity of the generation of exiles to which Sir George Oxenden
