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

CHAP. 11.] JAMSHEDJI JIIBHAT 79

made his first voyage to China in the service of a Parsi merchant, who happened to be a relative of his. After a short stay there he returned to India, but he had seen too much of the vast field open to commerce in that country to remain long in Bombay. He left the service of his father-in-law, and for the second time started for China to trade on his own account. Returning thence with a sufficient competency, if not with wealth, he made three other voyages to the country of the Celestials. His fourth voyage proved singularly adventurous. Owing to the war which was then going on between England and France, the vessel in which he was a passenger, the Brunswick, was captured by a French man-ofwar. He consequently was compelled to remain for a time a prisoner in the hands of the French.

We give here a literal translation of a Gujarati letter written by Jamshedji to a friend in Bombay in 1806 during his captivity on board the ship Brunswick, which was captured by the French on her way from India to China. Even at this distant date this letter will be read with interest, not only on account of the event which was sufficiently rare in that period of the decline of French naval power and for the incidents it relates, but because of the illustrious person who wrote it, and who in later years proved to be one of the greatest benefactors not only of his race but of mankind at large :—