centuries before our era had not Ptolemy Philadelphus feared inundations as a result of its construction. By the first century A.D. merchant craft were crossing the Arabian Sea, Hippalus having discovered how to make use of the monsoon winds for the purpose; the sea trade having been previously confined to a coast trade, chiefly Egyptian. The decline of the Roman Empire about the sixth century A.D. saw the rise of the Saracens and Arabs, and Bagdad and Basra become influential and very wealthy commercial centres.

Important as the sea routes were in connection with the Indian and Eastern trade, the old land routes were evidently utilised for commercial purposes from the very earliest times, and continued to be so used until about the fifteenth century A.D., when the Turks and the Moguls finally closed them. The history of these land routes into India forms a fascinating study. Among the most important were those connecting Northern India with the Oxus, which then struck into the great trans-Asian route of the silk trade with China, reaching Europe by way of the Caspian or Black Sea. All High Asia shows a network of these ancient Arab trade routes, and many remains of ruined cities and so forth indicate the great wealth and magnificence of the old cities of the Oxus basin. Another important route, to secure which was doubtless the object of the Arab advance into Sind, in the eighth century A.D., was the direct land route between Western India and Bagdad, which passed through Mekran and traversed the length of South Persia.

The Mahomedan conquest of Sind and the gradual establishment of Mussulman dynasties in India coincided with the disappearance of Buddhism from the land of its origin, although Buddhist provinces maintained the struggle for some time thereafter. This invasion by the Mahomedans was not made by way of the old north-western corridor routes of entry into India. It proved the one exception to the methods by which India had been successfully invaded. The Mahomedans came from the Persian border and had the assistance of a fleet as they held the command of the sea, a command which was indispensable to an invasion from any sea quarter.

From this period till the fifteenth century the Mahomedan power held sway and received great wealth from the flow of commerce passing from East to West, by both land and sea routes. The change came when the Crusaders broke the

power of the Saracens, and soon after the Turk and Mogul rose to power and swarmed into Western Asia and blocked the Indian trading routes for a time.

It was probably this action on the part of the Turks which brought home to the Western powers the true position; for the great struggles between them during the next three centuries were undertaken with the object of obtaining command of the Eastern Ocean. Arabia became the first mistress of the seas, and the Arabs alone for centuries possessed the knowledge of the commercial geography of the East. When the Western nations commenced to enter into competition it was the Venetians who first arrived, Venetian merchants having settled in Constantinople after its capture by the Crusaders in 1204. For fifty years the Venetians held possession of the Black Sea trade and maintained the upper hand in the Mediterranean. Then came the ascendency of the Genoese about the middle of the thirteenth century. They were ousted by the Turks, who captured Constantinople in 1453. The Turk had considerable difficulty in holding his own at sea against the Arab, and both were still sea powers at the time of the discovery of the Cape route to India by Vasco da Gama in 1497. This opened a new commercial route to India and struck a blow at the jealous guard of the old land routes maintained by the Arabs and Turks.

The Portuguese came on the scene early in the sixteenth century, and obtained a complete ascendency over the Eastern trade from Japan to the Cape of Good Hope, a hold which they maintained throughout the sixteenth century. When the Portuguese first arrived in India, Delhi and the whole of Bengal were under the sway of the Afghans. The Deccan was divided into the five Mahomedan kingdoms of Ahmednagar, Bijapur, Elichpur, Golconda and Bidar.

But Vijayanagar, the great Hindu rajah who ruled the whole of the southern provinces, was the most powerful and magnificent monarch of the period. The decline of the power of the Portuguese was as rapid as its rise. By 1683 it had almost disappeared, the Mahrattas had advanced to the gates of Goa, the Portuguese capital, and the rest of their history in India is negligible. They now hold only Goa, Daman and Diu on the west coast, with an area of about 2350 square miles and half a million or so of population.

The Dutch were the next to appear in the field. They were the pre-eminent power on the high seas at this time. In 1651

they founded a colony at the Cape of Good Hope, and in 1658 they captured the last stronghold of the Portuguese in Ceylon. The Dutch enjoyed a century of supremacy, their power in India being finally broken by Clive at the Battle of Chinsura, 1758, and subsequently they entirely disappeared from India. The French and English then commenced the struggle for supremacy in the country.

The history of the English in India presents quite a different aspect from that of the other Western nations who in the past had fought for and held supremacy. The latter fought with the primary object of obtaining the ascendency over the trading routes. The Arabs, the Portuguese and Dutch only held a narrow fringe on the coast of India, where the two latter powers set up factories at which the valuable merchandise was collected. They held no important positions inland. The French and English commenced in the same fashion, but each in turn advanced inland. In the ensuing struggle the French were beaten, and the modern British Indian Empire with its sway over the wild borderlands to north-east, north and northwest and its hold of the sea and supremacy in the Persian Gulf came into being.

A brief glance must be given at the events following the arrival of the British in India, since it is of importance to a subsequent understanding of the position and their attitude towards the forests during the first half-century of their rule in the country.

As has been shown the Portuguese were the first amongst the European Powers in the field in India, and they waged a long struggle to maintain exclusive possession of the rich monopoly of Oriental commerce. The Dutch (then known as the Netherlanders) enjoyed a share of these profits, as they acted as carriers between the Portuguese factories and the northern nations of Europe. In 1570 the Dutch formed themselves into a separate Government in defiance of the power of Philip of Spain, who then governed with an iron rule the united kingdoms of Spain and Portugal. Incensed at this open defiance Philip forbade the Portuguese to employ the Dutch any longer as intermediaries, and this prohibition led the latter to start commercial operations on their own account. They formed various trading settlements in the East in the commencement of the seventeenth century and eventually supplanted their former employers.

England entered into this competition at the same period.

A company of London merchants initiated an attempt to trade with India, being warmly supported by Queen Elizabeth, who never lost an opportunity of opposing Philip of Spain. Several of the first English expeditions met with disaster, whilst those of the Dutch were highly successful. It was the grasping policy of the merchants of this latter nation in raising the price of pepper from three to six and eight shillings per pound (the cost in India being two to three pence), which actually led to the formation of the British East India Company. A meeting of London merchants, headed by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, was held at Founder's Hall in London on 22nd September, 1599. At the meeting a company was formed for the purpose of setting on foot a voyage to the East Indies. The stock, considered a large one at that time, amounted to £30,133 1s. 8d., divided into 101 shares or adventures, the subscription of individuals varying from £100 to £3000. Queen Elizabeth was petitioned to grant a Charter of Incorporation to the Company. She delayed for a few months as negotiations were being carried on at the time with Spain through the mediation of France. These negotiations fell through, and the discussion of the East Indian trading question was then taken up eagerly both in Court and City circles. On the last day of the year 1599 Elizabeth signed a charter on behalf of about 220 gentlemen-merchants, and other individuals of repute constituting them "one bodie-corporate and politique indeed," by the style of "The Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies." This was the origin of the Charter of the East India Company, which subsequently gave rise to the dual Government of India by the Crown and the Court of Directors of the Honourable The East India Company, which was to last until the Indian Mutiny threatened to lose us India.

The sixteenth century, especially during the reign of Elizabeth, had witnessed an extraordinary progress in the bid for commercial supremacy by England; and in great daring and intrepidity in sea exploration on the part of a score and more brilliant sea captains. The issue of the above Charter, although Elizabeth did not live to see the first fruits thereof, was a fitting termination to a period which had seen the foundations of the British Empire surely and truly laid.

During the seventeenth century the English remained simple traders in India with no cravings for political or territorial aggrandisement. They remained absorbed in the business

of buying and selling, and were only anxious for the safety of their fleet, which rapidly became more formidable and extensive in proportion to the rich freight it had to convey through seas infested with pirates and frequently occupied by hostile European fleets. A second Company to trade with India had been formed in London and received recognition from the English Government in 1698. The two companies after considerable friction and loss on the part of each were amalgamated in 1708.

Louis XIV's great minister Colbert, the progenitor of Forest Conservancy in France, formed the first French East India Company on the model of that of Holland in 1664. This Company carried on operations with various vicissitudes throughout the next century. But the French regarded their presence in India more from the political advantages to be gained than the commercial, as we subsequently discovered.

The eighteenth century opened on an entirely new phase in Indian annals. The decay of Mogul power, which had begun before the death of the Emperor Aurungzebe in 1707, was greatly accelerated by that event, and by the usual war of succession which inevitably occurred amongst his sons. The will of the dead Emperor decreed the division of his dominions amongst them, but instead of consenting to this division they fought amongst themselves and the survivor, Bahadur Shah, was left to rule the scattered territories forming the empire. Amongst these several units there was an entire lack of cohesion and organisation. At the time Aurungzebe deposed his father, Shah Jehan, condemning him to lifelong captivity, the dominions were comparatively well governed, and had the former, a man of unquestioned ability, set himself to consolidate the empire into a homogeneous whole it might have kept together. But he spent his time in overrunning and spreading desolation and ruin amongst neighbouring independent states regardless of the internal decay which was sapping the very heart of his empire.

Such was the position of India when the East India Company began to exchange their position as traders on sufferance for that of territorial lords. The first steps taken in the latter direction, as East India House records clearly indicate, were by no means voluntary. For the English merchants were still essentially traders, and had persistently opposed the acquisition of territory and dominion. And the official correspondence of the time shows a complete ignorance of, and consequently