One of the most curious points about this coming change was that though the greed of gold was undoubtedly the chief factor in bringing it about, the first two solid holds which the English got on India were due to the skill, not of British diplomacy or British commerce, but of British medicine. It was in consequence of the services rendered by Ship's surgeon Gabriel Boughton to the Emperor Shâhjahân's beloved daughter Jahanâra, when she was as a child badly burnt, that the Old East India Company gained the right to trade in Bengal free of all duty; this being the only fee asked--surely a public-spirited and disinterested one. And equally so was the only fee demanded by Staff Surgeon William Hamilton in 1715 for curing the decadent Emperor Farokhshir of a tumour in the back which had resisted the efforts of all the court physicians. He asked for the first sizable grant of land on the Indian peninsula which had ever been given to any foreign power: that is to say, for thirty-seven villages contiguous to the factory at Calcutta, which gave the English command of the river for 10 miles south of the port, for some villages near Madras, which consolidated that _pied à terre_; and for the island of Din on the western coast. These two fees, given by gratitude for services rendered, were practically the fee simple of all India. Some vague recognition of this fact doubtless prompted the epitaph on William Hamilton's neglected tombstone in Calcutta, which runs thus:-- His memory ought to be dear to his Nation For the credit he gained the English in curing Ferrukseer the present King of Hindustan of a malignant distemper By which he made his own name famous At the Court of that Great Monarch And without doubt will perpetuate his memory as well in Great Britain as all other Nations in Europe. He died, 4th December 1717. Gabriel Boughton, his predecessor in patriotism, dying God knows when, being buried God knows where. So the epitaph is a trifle over-confident; for Great Britain has a trick of forgetting her most faithful servants. THE RISE OF THE MAHRATTA POWER A.D. 1707 TO A.D. 1738 The story of Siva-ji has already been told. His early decease, while it did not materially check the rising flood of Mahratta power, certainly left the invading West a freer hand along the shores of India from Bombay to Calicut.