for sale. The Company were prepared to buy it, and so were the Portuguese; but a rich Mohammedan named Cassa Verona found favour with Golconda's Moslem officials, and secured the town on a short lease. Next it was leased to the Hindu Governor of Poonamallee; and then for a big price it went back again to the Portuguese. Towards the end of the seventeenth century the great Moghul Emperor Aurangzeb dethroned the lord of the soil, the King of Golconda; and, although the Portuguese were not turned out of San Thome, it was now a part of the Moghul Empire, and was put in charge of a Moslem ruler. After Aurangzeb's death, the Moghul Empire broke up, and the Nawab of Arcot eventually became independent, and San Thome was part of his dominions. In 1749, when Madras, after the French occupation, was restored to the English by an order from Paris, in accordance with the treaty of Aix la Chapelle, Dupleix at Pondicherry was bitterly disappointed at the rendition, and he formed designs for the acquisition of San Thome for France, as a set-off for the loss of Madras. The English at Fort St. George had information of his schemes, and, being in no way desirous of having aggressive Frenchmen for close neighbours, they forestalled Dupleix by persuading the Nawab to make the Company a grant of 'Mylapore, _alias_ St. Thome,' on condition that the Company should undertake to help the Nawab with men and money whenever he should call upon them to do so. It was thus that San Thome became a British possession; and, although it was afterwards ravaged successively by the French under Count Lally and by Haidar Ali of Mysore, it has remained a British possession ever since. We have said enough to show the manner in which the different parts of the modern city of Madras came into the hands of the English. The methods were not always wholly admirable; but we must remember that the East India Company was a mercantile association, fighting for its existence under diamond-cut-diamond conditions; and we must remember also that, although its representatives at Madras were sent out to India not to rule but to earn dividends for the shareholders, yet the Company's rule over Madras was so upright that crowds of people were continually flocking into Madras to enjoy its benefits. CHAPTER VII OUTPOSTS The suburban lands which were successively granted to the Company were not protected either by the walls of Fort St. George or by the walls of Black Town, and it was accordingly necessary that special means should be adopted for their defence. The Company's military engineers devised the erection of small suburban forts ('redoubts'), block-houses, and batteries, which were to be mounted with cannon and to be in charge of an appropriate garrison, and were to serve as outposts for the protection of the outlying quarters of the city.