"The Kingdom of Arracan has contained during many years several Portuguese settlers, a great number of Christian slaves, or half-cast Portuguese and other Europeans collected from various parts of the world. That kingdom was a place of refuge for fugitives from Goa, Ceylon, Cochin, Malacca, and other settlements ... and no persons were better received than those who had deserted their monasteries, married two or three wives, or committed other great crimes.... As they were unawed and unrestrained by the Government, it was not surprising that these renegades pursued no other trade than that of rapine and piracy. They scoured the neighbouring seas in light galleys, entered the numerous arms of the Ganges, ravished the islands of Lower Bengal; and, often penetrating forty or fifty leagues up the country, surprised and carried away the entire population of villages on market days, and at times when the inhabitants were assembled for the celebration of a marriage, or some other festival.... The treatment of the slaves thus made was most cruel.... By a mutual understanding, the pirates would await the arrival of the Portuguese ships, who bought whole cargoes at a cheap rate; and it is lamentable to reflect that other Europeans have pursued the same flagitious commerce with the Pirates of Arracan, who boast that they convert more Hindus to Christianity in a twelve-month than all the missionaries in India do in twelve years." Not a pleasing picture, though it whets the curiosity to know more, for instance, of the career of Fra Joan, the Augustine monk who, having by means unknown possessed himself of the island of Sundiva, reigned there King-of-the-Pirates for many years. It was the encouragement given to these scourges of the seas which brought down on the Portuguese the vengeance of Shâhjahân, whose laconic reply to the complaint of his governor in Bengal against their new factory at Hugli is delightful in its peremptoriness, pathetic in its pride: "Expel those idolaters from my dominions!" Easier said than done, even though the image-decorated church at Agra, which had been built in the reign of Akbar, and the newer one with chimes in its steeple, which had been erected at Lahôre in Jahângir's time, could easily be demolished. Still Hugli could be besieged and captured, and no doubt the success made a subject for general rejoicing. For above all things Shâhjahân delighted in fireworks; that is to say, he had a perfect passion for expensive entertainments, for gorgeous processions, for magnificent buildings. Half the architectural sights of to-day in Northern India are due to Shâhjahân's lavish love of beauty. Some of his _fêtes_, again, are estimated to have cost over a million and a half sterling. The famous peacock throne, of which Tavernier, a French jeweller by profession, asserts--with apparent credence--that it was commonly supposed to have been worth nearly six and a half millions, was constructed by this king's orders.