This was before the Bank of England was thought of. We have seen that in Bombay there were no banking companies, foreign or domestic, until 1840, and until this period, if you substitute a number of firms, English and native, for Backwell, you will answer the question. The Bombay Government itself, in 1806, was quite content when Bruce, Fawcett & Co. became its bankers, and it had no need to be otherwise. Bombay, like Calcutta, Alexandria, or Manilla, did a very large business. before the advent of Banking Companies. Here we meet with what seems to us a phase of the question that belongs entirely to India-the Hoondie system, and the establishment of shroffs in correspondence, and which covered India's great towns, as with a network so perfect that not one of them was left out, and working in so complete unison that, in that very year of 1840, our disaster in Afghanistan was known by the Calcutta shroffs some time before the news reached Government.

To have, in vulgar parlance, drawing-posts in each town, by whom the money of a second party could be received and paid away to a third party, seems to us an invention purely Indian and indigenous to the country, and possibly Europe got it from India. The how or the why may be ascertained, but when this custom obtained in India I despair of finding, as I would to find out the origin of caste. Gour, Kanouge, and the successive cities which flourished and fell on the environs of modern Delhi, as I take it, all had their shroffs. The plunder of their piles may have swollen the sacks of Timour and Nadir Shah. You may go back to Ozein and the Christian era, and seek in vain for a time when there were no shroffs in India. There is ample evidence of this banking in India before a single Englishman touched its shores.

There is a story given by Ferishta, under date of 1366, how the King of Gulburga drew a hoondie at sight on the King of Vizianagar, the greatest Hindoo potentate of his time, giving it to a blind musician with the threat of war to the knife if the bill was unpaid. And there is another old-world story of a dervish, who, after entering a town, produced from his wallet a bill drawn by the god Ram, whereat everybody laughed except an oil man, who did the needful, and saved himself from the blasting curses of the dervish. Sivaji's bill also, dishonoured

for a time (1675), proves that the bill system, drawer and acceptor, was in vogue centuries ago in India, and the so-called Government Paper of 1678, with Sir John Child's signature, now in the Empire of India Exhibition, is simply a hoondie or promissory note, as we would say, for value received. India, therefore, did not need to go to Venice or Amsterdam for a system of internal banking by which, through means of hoondies, the business of the country was carried on, as it is apparent that this was in vogue before Amsterdam was founded or Venice became Queen of the Adriatic.

Nobody could be at any loss in Bombay in procuring a bill on any town in India. Here is a Bombay shroff's advertisement of 1825 :

"Balcrishna Gopal will buy and sell hoondies on the various towns in India." This is the Alpha and Omega of Indian Exchange. When the Bank of Western India broke ground in Bombay there were half a hundred shroffs in and outside the Fort, more or less engaged in the business of inland exchange. The general reader may have skipped our list at the head of this section, but it will be acceptable to the natives interested in the history of Banking and Exchange. I have selected the most considerable names among the Bombay shroffs of 1845—that is, the vanguard of that year alone-and curiously enough I am indebted for the information to a MS. copy which I believe was the actual list held by the Bank of Western India, and which, by a series of migrations, has come into my hands. The document has an antique flavour about it, and divides the Bombay shroffs into their several races or castes. There are the Futtoporiah and the Gosavey, &c., those having their places of business in the Fort and those at Chinch Bunder. These shroffs were, of course, of different degrees of credit, and some of them had carried on business for more than half a century.

BULLION.

From the earliest ages bullion has been the one thing needful in India, "the sink," as it has been termed, of the precious metals. The cry of the Zamorin of Calicut to Vasco da Gama was, "What I seek from thy country is gold and

silver," and it has been the cry almost ever since. Its transmission by land or by sea was a risk, and this trade in bullion was fearfully handicapped by pirates, dacoits, and thugs, who were ever on the watch for buggalow or cafila.

Aungier, before 1676, started an Insurance Fund against loss by robbery, as far, at all events, as Ahmedabad. A great deal of gold in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries came to India from Darfur and Abyssinia, where, "Afric's sunny fountains roll down their golden sand." The sequins which for ages the women of India have worn in their hair were mostly minted in Cairo; and Aden, in 1503, was a favourite emporium of bullion brokers. The account we have of their bargaining with a shawl over their heads is an exact counterpart of what you may see in the Bombay Goldsmiths' Bazaar, or for that matter out of it. Great experts they were in testing the purity of gold, and their scales were so fine as to turn with a single hair.

Angria's fleet and the Barbary corsairs were pretty well disposed of by the beginning of the nineteenth century, and war risks were covered by insurance. But what about your own flesh and blood, when a man's enemies become those of his own household? One looks for piracy on the high seas, but not at Greenwich or Blackwall. In 1816 Fairly and Co. despatched thirteen chests of dollars (£13,000) to Calcutta, intended for the Lady Campbell, lying at Greenwich. They were put into a hoy, which proceeded down the river. Darkness came on. During the night a small craft hailed them and came alongside, apparently with two men only on board, to ask some questions. The sudden drawing aside of a tarpaulin revealed twenty men, who at once scrambled into the hoy, armed with pistols and cutlasses. "Your money or your life!" was the question. They broke into the hold and took seven chests, each containing four bags of 1,000 dollars each. Some of the robbers with their plunder were caught in the Essex marshes. Thinking it was low water, they sank three chests in the sand, meaning to recover them at their leisure. But when the tide went out one of the box ends cropped up, and their purpose was baffled. The robbers were veritable pirates, and were called the "Blackwall Gang.”

PARSEE HOUSES.

It may serve to illustrate the position of the mercantile world of 1845 in Bombay if we add a list of the Parsee leading firms which were carrying on business at the advent of Exchange Banking. The names of some of their old-world places of business enhance the interest of the note, and while the reader will recognise the "forbears" of some of our honoured magnates, there are others which have disappeared from this chequered web of history.

Bomanjee and Ardaseer Hormusjee, Old Theatre.
Byramjee Jeejeebhoy, Rampart Row.

Cursetlee Ardaseer Dady, Borah Bazaar Street.

Cursetjee Cowasjee Sous and Co., Grant Buildings, Colaba.
Dadabhoy and Muncherjee Pestonjee, Borah Bazaar Street.
Dadabhoy Rustomjee Banajee, Rampart Row.

Framjee Cowasjee, Apollo Street.

Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy Sons and Co., Gunbow Street.
Jeejeebhoy Dadabhoy Sons and Co., Rampart Row.

Manackjee Nusserwanjee Petit.

Muncherjee and Pestonjee Framjee Cama, Old Theatre.

Nusserwanjee Bomanjee Mody, Öld Theatre.

Nowrojee Ardaseer Davur, Old Theatre.

Ruttonjee Edusjee Bottlewalla, Gunbow Street.

Jamsetjee Furdonjee Paruck, Church Gate Street.
Manackjee Limjee Cowasjee.

By way of explanation we only now add that on the completion of Grant Buildings there was a considerable migration of native and half a dozen English houses of business to it (1844), as it was the belief then that it would eventually become the mercantile centre. The site of the Old Theatre was Hormusjee's block in the Elphinstone Circle, next to the Chartered Bank, and Gunbow Street is adjacent and has got an ornamental fountain near it.

(5.) SOME MERCHANTS OF 1845 AND THEIR METHODS OF BUSINESS.

JOHN SMITH had accompanied Dr. Wilson (1843-44) in his tour through Egypt and Syria. Andrew Cassels and William Graham, M.P., became members of the Indian Council in London. Several of the native members have already been noticed. In 1842 Dhackjee Dadajee's house was the object of suspicions. His place was overhauled, and though fourteen lakhs of the