Goa

“ In less than a century and a half after De Gama landed on the shore of India, the splendour of Goa had departed for ever. Presently the climate changed in that unaccountable manner often witnessed in hot and tropical countries. Every one fled from the deadly fever that raged within the devoted precincts, and the villages around began to thrive upon the decay of the capital. ”

“ Goa is the name of this Portuguese colony, which embraces an area of 1,500 square miles, and has been ruled by Portugal since the fifteenth century. Half a million Portuguese subjects live in Goa, and from that place comes the Goanese. They consider themselves Europeans, dress like Europeans, but are as black as an Indian. Stewards on passenger steamships in the East are generally Goanese, as they make better servants than Indians. The passengers were returning from Africa, where they had earned from $20 to $30 a month, very good wages for them. ”

“ The entire territory is hilly, and intersected by numerous rivers, of which the Mandovi is the most important. Both the ancient and modern cities of Goa have been built on its banks. The promontories of Bardez and Salsette protect a fine harbour, capable of accommodating vessels of the largest tonnage during the greater part of the year. The climate of Goa is generally healthy, though smallpox and cholera have from time to time broken out there with great virulence. ”

“ I have lived in sandy deserts, in primeval forests; I have suffered hunger, thirst, cold, heat, fatigue, privation, and danger, and thought it charming; but I hated the sort of life at Goa. It is dead, and there is nothing to reward one; only we were here for a purpose.
[Pg 106]
Life there.
There are three Goas, full of history and romance. There is the Inquisition to study, and there is the tomb of St. Francis Xavier.
No. 1 is the old Hindú Goa, now called San Lourenço, about six miles from Panjim (New Goa) , upon the winding river, and two miles to the southward of Old Goa, or Goa Velha. ”

“ Francis in Goa, writes to me that ... in Goa alone there are 90 resident friars; and besides in Baçaim and its adjuncts, viz., in the island of Salsete and other districts of the north they have 18 parishes (Freguezias) of native Christians with vicars; and five of the convents have colleges, or seminaries where they bring up little orphans; and that the said Ward of Goa extends 300 leagues from north to south."—Livros das Monções, 298. ”

“ The Gentoo will enter your room with his slippers on, sit down after shaking hands as if the action were a matter of course, chew his betel, and squirt the scarlet juice all over the floor, in a word, make himself as offensive as you can conceive. But at Goa all men are equal. ”

“ The Dutch have two colonies in India also, and Goa, the most important of all, is subject to Portugal. The territory is sixty-two miles long by forty miles wide, and has a population of 446,982. The inhabitants are nearly all Roman Catholics, and the archbishop of Goa is primate of the East, having jurisdiction over all Roman Catholics between Cairo and Hong-Kong. ”

“ The ancient inhabitants of Guzarat are easily distinguished from the others by their colour, which is much more black, and by their being more stupid and barbarous.
Goa is the chief Portuguese settlement in the Indies, and though it may have lost much of its former splendor, it is still, however, a rich and a commercial city. Here, at one time, more slaves were sold than in any other part of the world; and where the most beautiful women and girls, from all parts of Asia, became the property of the highest bidder. ”

“ Men in whose veins the most aristocratic blood of Portugal ran gave to the local society a distinction uncommon in an Eastern settlement. On all hands were evidences of refinement and luxury, and of the splendours of a powerful seat of government. Even to-day, when Goa is little more than a heap of mouldering ruins, it is possible to realize in the survivals of the past something of the dignified life which was once lived in this the earliest scene of European colonization in India. ”

“ The social life of Goa was brilliant, as befitted the headquarters of the viceregal court, the army and navy, and the church; but the luxury and ostentation of all classes had become a byword before the end of the 16th century. Almost all manual labour was done by slaves; common soldiers assumed high-sounding titles, and it was even customary for the poor noblemen who congregated together in boarding-houses to subscribe for a few silken cloaks, a silken umbrella and a common man-servant, so that each could take his turn to promenade the streets, fashionably attired and with a proper escort. ”

“ His description, it will be seen, is that of a delta-island, and Goa is the only one partaking of that character upon the coast. He says it contained 36 villages; and Barros tells us that Goa Island was known to the natives as Tīsvāḍī, a name signifying "Thirty villages." (See SALSETTE.) Its vicinity to the island where Ibn Batuta proceeded to anchor, which we have shown to be Anchediva (q.v.) , is another proof. Turning to Rashīduddīn, the order in which he places Sindābūr, Faknūr (Baccanore) , Manjarūr (Mangalore) , Hīlī (Mt. D'Ely) , is perfectly correct, if for Sindābūr we substitute Goa. ”

“ The small island of Ticuari, in which the city of Goa stands, is situated in lat. 15° 30' N. in a bay at the mouth of the river Gasim on the coast of Canara, being about three leagues long and one broad. It contains both hill and level ground, has good water, and is fertile, pleasant, and healthy. The city of Goa, now seated on the northern part of the island, was formerly in its southern part. The present city was built by a Moor named Malek Husseyn about 40 years before the arrival of the Portuguese in India. ”

“ Gradually, and probably owing to local application at Goa, where the natives seem to have been from the first known to the Portuguese as Canarijs, a term which in the old Portuguese works means the Konkani people and language of Goa, the name became appropriated to the low country on the coast between Goa and Malabar, which was subject to the kingdom in question, much in the same way that the name Carnatic came at a later date to be misapplied on the other side of the Peninsula. ”

“ At last my master came to Goa, where of course he became so pious a Christian that he kept a priest in the house—to perfect him in Portuguese—and attended mass once a day. And when we went to see the old city, such were the fervency of his lamentations over the ruins of the Inquisition, and the frequency of his dinners to the Padre of Saint Francis, that the simple old gentleman half canonized him in his heart. But I guessed that some trick was at hand, when a pattimar, hired for a month, came and lay off the wharf stairs, close to where the Sahib is now sitting ”

“ At noon the Victoria was passing over a petty town, a mere assemblage of miserable huts, which once was Goa, a great capital.
"It was there," said the doctor, "that Barth crossed the Niger, on his return from Timbuctoo. This is the river so famous in antiquity, the rival of the Nile, to which pagan superstition ascribed a celestial origin. Like the Nile, it has engaged the attention of geographers in all ages; and like it, also, its exploration has cost the lives of many victims; yes, even more of them than perished on account of the other." ”

“ And if it seems a hard matter to those who have written about this to Your Highness that the recovery of Goa should have been so many times attempted, how much harder must it have been to gain the country from so powerful a sovereign as the King of Bijápur, Lord of so many armies, who is not likely to refrain from straining every nerve to recover the possession of it and striking a decisive blow at our prestige, if he could do so? And whenever any one of his captains shall come up against this city, are we to surrender it immediately without first of all measuring our forces against him? ”

“ Scandal, however, is as plentiful as it always is in a limited circle of idle society. The stranger who visits Goa, persuaded that he is to meet with the freedom of manners and love of pleasure which distinguish the people of the Continent, will find himself grievously mistaken. The priesthood is numerous, and still influential, if not powerful. The fair sex has not much liberty here, and their natural protectors are jealous as jailers. ”

“ But in manners, appearance, [97] customs, and education, they exactly resemble the mass of the community.
The Mestici, or mixed breed, composes the great mass of society at Goa; it includes all classes, from the cook to the government official. In 1835 one of them rose to the highest post of dignity, but his political career was curt and remarkably unsuccessful. Some half-castes travel in Europe, a great many migrate to Bombay for service and commerce, but the major part stays at Goa to stock professions, and support the honour of the family. ”

“ Old Goa is, for the most part, a city of ruins without inhabitants other than ecclesiastics and their dependents. The chief surviving buildings are the cathedral, founded by Albuquerque in 1511 to commemorate his entry into Goa on St Catherine’s day 1510, and rebuilt in 1623, and still used for public worship; the convent of St Francis (1517) , a converted mosque rebuilt in 1661, with a portal of carved black stone, which is the only relic of Portuguese architecture in India dating from the first quarter of the 16th century ”

“ In 1560 the Inquisition with all its horrors was introduced into Goa. But Portugal was too small a country to keep up the struggle for long. The drain of men told upon her vitality, their quality deteriorated, and their bigotry and intolerance raised even a fiercer opposition to them within the bounds of India; and as the Dutch and British came into prominence the Portuguese gradually faded away. In 1603 and 1639 the Dutch blockaded Goa; during the first half of the 17th century they routed the Portuguese everywhere in India, Ceylon and Java. ”

“ The Portuguese, from the necessity of the case, traded sword in hand; and their intercourse with the nations of [Pg 12] the East was much more marked by the insolence of conquest, than by the complaisance of traders. Goa, some three hundred miles to the north of Calicut, which fell into their power in 1510, became a splendid city, the vice-royal and archiepiscopal seat, whence were governed a multitude of widespread dependencies. ”

“ But, of course, when a man is asked questions, and sees the answers taken down in shorthand, it is a very different thing.’”—Bret Harte. [Pg 89]
MY SERVANT JOHN.
By Archibald Forbes.
Illustrations by Frederic Villiers.
Goa is a forlorn and decayed settlement on the west coast of Hindustan, the last remaining relic of the once wide dominions of the Portuguese in India. Its inhabitants are of the Roman Catholic faith, ever since in the 16th century St. Francis Xavier, the colleague of Loyola in the foundation of the Society of Jesus, baptised the Goanese in a mass. ”

“ Since his day matters have gone steadily from bad to worse, and the population, thinned by pestilence and emigration, is now scarcely that of a small village. Churches and public buildings alike have fallen into decay, and the ruins are fast being overspread by the growth of tropical vegetation. Panjim, the “New Goa” of to-day, is about three miles from the mouth of the river, and enjoys the small remains of the state and commerce which once made Goa the chief city of the Indies. ”

“ Leaving these places, there are twenty leagues of coast southwards as far as a cape, which must be doubled to enter Goa; and after that ten leagues to the north-west, then ten more to the east, and south-south-west twenty leagues, then seventeen leagues to the north-west, as far as the Cape Rama. And in this gulf there are many small islands, the chief of which is Goa. ”

“ The only objection to the holy profession at Goa is, that the comparatively idle life led by its members offers strong inducements to a poor, careless, and indolent people, who prefer its inutility to pursuits more advantageous to themselves, as well as more profitable to the commonweal. ”

“ The only way we had for it was to stand away for Goa, and trade, if we could, for our spices, with the Portuguese factory there. Accordingly, we sailed almost thither, for we had made land two days before, and being in the latitude of Goa, were standing in fair for Margaon, on the head of Salsat, at the going up to Goa, when I called to the men at the helm to bring the ship to, and bid the pilot go away N.N.W., till we came out of sight of the shore, when William and I called a council, as we used to do upon emergencies, what course we should take to trade there and not be discovered ”

“ We came to Goa the 24th day of October, and were there received in a most charitable manner. The natives are tawny, but not disfigured in their lips and noses, like the Moors and Kafrs of Ethiopia. The lower ranks go for the most part naked, having only a clout or apron before them of a span long and as much in breadth, with a lace two fingers breadth, girded about with a string, and nothing more; and thus they think themselves as well dressed as we, with all our finery. ”

“ The 17th I received accounts from Goa, which were said to be true, that Don Emanuel de Meneses, with about 300 of those who were saved ashore out of the Admiral, had arrived at Goa in a very poor condition, having been robbed and plundered by the inhabitants of Angazesia, who had also slain many. On the 24th October, not one of the Lisbon fleet had reached Goa, to their great wonder and disappointment. The Mosambique galleon was fought with by the Hollanders that lately went from Surat, and had cruised off Goa to meet the expected ships. ”