History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

126 HISTORY OF THE PARSIS. [CHAP. II.

energies to commercial business. At the highest period of their prosperity in trade, which was from 1835 to 1845, they had their head-office in Bombay, with branch firms and corresponding houses in every important town of the Bombay Presidency, and also in Calcutta, Singapore, and China. In 1825-26 they imported the first batch that ever reached Bombay of Berar cotton, in five hundred bullock-loads as an experiment, and this they subsequently followed up by numerous other efforts in the same direction, notwithstanding the thousand and one difficulties which nature and the Nizam’s officials created in those days of comparative ignorance and little or no communication, They were the first to erect cotton screws and presses at Khangam and in the neighbouring cotton districts. They made various cart-roads over the Ghats between the Berars and the Malabar coast, and built bridges over streams and rivers for the speedy transit of merchandise between Bombay and the Deccan. In a word, they were the pioneers and founders of the cotton trade between the Nizam’s Dominions and the Bombay Presidency, the value of which to England and India can in these days only be estimated by crores of rupees. In 1830 they were specially invited by the Nizam’s minister, Raja Chandu Lal, to open banking firms in his territories, and in this line of business they displayed such energy and tact that, within a