خلاصه ماشینی:
v=-once the greatest port of Bengal, next to Satgaon-whose fame for commerce so much impressed Ralph Fitch, a pioneer merchant of London, that he, on his return to Europe in 1591, "thrilled London with the maznificent possibilities of Eastern Trade "; on whose soil nearly all the great European powers staked everything in the 17th century to establish their commercial supre• macy; where during the early days of British rule, the well-to-do European ladies and gentlemen (including the wife of the Governor-General Warren Hastings) used to meet for the benefit of their health ;1 where once stood the historic "Hughly house" of l\Ir. and Mrs. Motte-2 now, shorn of its past fame for commerce, health3 and opulence, presents a sad spectacle and a perplexing problem to the modern generation of Bengal.
as 'beginning of 1651 ,' a fact which is corroborated by the following statement of Sir William Hedges, who came to Bengal in 1682 as the Governor of the English factories in the Bay of Bengal :-" The Captain of the Lioness (which sailed from England in February 1650) after arriv• ing at Balasore despatched James Bridgeman, the chief merchant of the aforesaid ship with Edward Stephens as his second, and William Blake and Taylor as assistants, to make a settlement at Hughly and gave them long in• structions and edifying admonitions dated the 14th Sep• tember 1650, which showed how excellent were the inten• tions of the English East India Company.