The first European traveller who has given us an account of the country near the island of Bombay was an Italian friar named Odoricus, who passed nearly a month at Tana--or more properly Thanah--where four of his family fell victims to the intolerant spirit of the natives, and suffered martyrdom. His narrative was published in Latin in 1330 A. D. by William de Solanga. The first Englishman who visited the western coast of India was Thomas Stephens, of New College, Oxford. He reached Goa in October, 1579, and in the year 1608 Pryard de Laval mentions him at the time as rector of a college at Salsette. It was during the early career of the famous Zehir-ed Deen Mohammed, a descendant of the renowned Genghis-khân, and the founder of the so-called Mohgul dynasty, better known by his common name of Bâber, or "the Tiger," that the Portuguese, whose maritime discoveries were beginning to produce an important revolution in the commercial world, succeeded in accomplishing their long-desired object of finding a passage by the Cape of Good Hope to India. In the year 1498, just ten months and two days after leaving the port of Lisbon, Vasco da Gama landed on the coast of Malabar at Calicut, or more properly Kale Khoda, "City of the Black Goddess." Calicut was at that period not only a very ancient seaport, but an extensive territory, which, stretching along the western coast of Southern India, reached from Bombay and the adjacent islands to Cape Comorin. It was, at an early period, so famous for its weaving and dyeing of cotton cloth that its name became identified with the manufactured fabric, whence the name _calico_. The dyeing of cotton cloths seems to have been in practice in India in very remote ages. Pliny as early as the first century mentions in his _Natural History_ that there existed in Egypt a wonderful method of dyeing white cloth. It is now generally admitted that this ingenious art originated in India, and from that country found its way into Egypt. It was not till toward the middle of the seventeenth century that calico-printing was introduced into Europe. A knowledge of the art was acquired by some of the servants in the service of the Dutch East India Company, and carried to Holland, whence it was introduced in London in the year 1676.