424 EARL Y EUROPEAN SETTLEMENTS.
Mixed de-scendants.
neighbourhood of Dacca and Chittagong . The latter areknown as Firinghis ; and, excepting that they retain the RomanCatholic faith and European surnames, they are scarcely tobe distinguished either by colour, language, or habits of lifefrom the natives among whom they live. Their complexionis in many cases darker than that of the surrounding Indian population ; and, as a rule, they are a thriftless, feeble class.
Nor do the Portuguese succeed in obtaining any shareworth mentioning in the modern trade of British India. WhileFrench and Germans are taking advantage of the commercialactivity of British rule in the East to enter on Indian commer-cial enterprise in increasing numbers, the few Portuguese traders or employes born in Portugal and resorting toBritish India are decreasing. Their total, which amounted to426 in 1872, had fallen to 133 in 1881, and was returned at149 by the Census of 1891. The efforts by the British Government to establish a commercial solidarity of interestwith Portugal in India have also failed. The construction ofa railway, to a large extent with British private capital, andunder the supervision of private British engineers, designedto connect the main Portuguese Settlement of Goa with theinterior of India , and debouch at the Port of Marmagao,led, about 1885, to a customs treaty being negotiated, whichplaced the Goa and the British systems on a fairly homo-geneous basis. But after some years the Portuguese declinedto renew their engagements, and they are now (1892) in a stateof political and commercial isolation in India . I have muchpleasure, however, in closing this paragraph with an acknow-ledgment of the courtesy with which the Lisbon authoritieshave aided the efforts of the British Government to carry outa historical investigation into the Indo-Portuguese records ofthe past. Mr. Frederick Danvers, of the India Office, has madetwo visits to Portugal with this object, under orders of theSecretary of State for India . His Report, of which the proof-sheets have reached me as I am sending this chapter to press,deals with the public records at Lisbon and Evora for a periodof about three hundred years. It throws a flood of fresh lighton Indo-Portuguese history, and adds, among other discoveries,a new and important chapter to the history of the Marathas.
The Dutch were the first European nation who brokethrough the Portuguese monopoly. During the 16th century,Bruges , Antwerp , and Amsterdam became successively thegreat emporiums whence Indian produce, imported by thePortuguese , was distributed to Germany , and even to England.