Page 80 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

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80 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

almost fiendish malignity he could display to those who
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i had had the misfortune to give him offence even unwit­
tingly. He was essentially a man of moods. In the
evening he might be a genial and even interesting com­
panion, delighting in badinage and conversational small
h
talk. The morning would probably reveal him as the
personification of gloom, his brow clouded with a black
frown, his eye fierce and menacing and his voice like
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thunder. Woe to the man then on whom that terrible eye
might light. These strange transitions from one state of
mind to exactly the opposite are susceptible of a simple
explanation. Jehangir was an inveterate drinker, A
i carousal was a feature of the day’s routine, and probably
during the greater part of his reign he never went to bed
sober. Alcoholic excess produced its natural and inevit­

j able result in destroying the balance of the mind and
rendering the Emperor capricious, irritable and cruel. It
is doubtful whether in some of his fits of passion he was
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really sane. Such was the man who gave the concession
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which was the foundation of English trade in India, and
of the influence which led directly to the building up of the
mighty fabric of the British Indian Empire.
■
n: When the English merchant envoy with his escort of
wild horsemen rode on that hot April day in 1609 along
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the dusty road leading into Agra from the West they
must have excited more than ordinary attention; for
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Hawkins was not the man to hide his light under a bushel
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and in any event a European mission was a sufficient
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novelty to make a considerable stir in the imperial city.
Jehangir, who had probably been kept informed of the
progress of the mission after its departure from Surat,
appears to have had the very earliest intimation of its

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