AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN INDIA TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO

On the 9th March, 1709, the _Loyall Bliss_, East Indiaman, Captain Hudson,
left her anchorage in the Downs and sailed for Bengal. As passengers, she
carried Captain Gerrard Cooke, his wife, a son and two daughters, together
with a few soldiers. For many years Cooke had served the Company at Fort
William, as Gunner, an office that included the discharge of many
incongruous duties. After a stay in England, he was now returning to
Bengal, as engineer, with the rank of captain. The _Loyall Bliss_ was a
clumsy sailer, and made slow progress; so that August had come before she
left the Cape behind her. Contrary winds and bad weather still detained
her, and kept her westward of her course. By the middle of September, the
south-west monsoon, on which they depended to carry them up the bay, had
ceased to blow, so--

"our people being a great many Downe with the scurvy and our water
being short, wee called a Consultation of Officers it being too late
to pretend to get bengali the season being come that the N.E. Trade
wind being sett in and our people almost every man tainted with
distemper," it was determined to make for Carwar and "endever to gett
refresments there."

On the 7th October, they came to anchor in the little bay formed by the
Carwar River. The next day, hearing of a French man-of-war being on the
coast, they procured a pilot and anchored again under the guns of the
Portuguese fort on the island of Angediva, where lay the bones of some
three hundred of the first royal troops ever sent to India. Twenty-six