We know too well that there is a very different aspect of the matter.  All extensive intercourse between two races far asunder in habits and ideas, seems to be demoralising in some degrees to both parties, especially to the weaker.  But can we say that deterioration has been all on one side?  In these days of lying labels and plastered shirtings does the character of English trade and English goods stand as high in Asia as it did half a century ago! (Pel.  Boudd. II. 83; Jordanus, p. 22; Ayeen Akb. III. 8; P.  Vincenzo, p. 114; Pallas, Beytraege, III. 85; Rambles and Recns. II. 143.)

NOTE 2.—­The kingdom of Maabar called Soli is CHOLA or SOLADESAM, of which Kanchi (Conjeveram) was the ancient capital.[1] In the Ceylon Annals the continental invaders are frequently termed Solli.  The high terms of praise applied to it as “the best and noblest province of India,” seem to point to the well-watered fertility of Tanjore; but what is said of the pearls would extend the territory included to the shores of the Gulf of Manar.

NOTE 3.—­Abraham Roger gives from the Calendar of the Coromandel Brahmans the character, lucky or unlucky, of every hour of every day of the week; and there is also a chapter on the subject in Sonnerat (I. 304 seqq.).  For a happy explanation of the term Choiach I am indebted to Dr. Caldwell:  “This apparently difficult word can be identified much more easily than most others.  Hindu astrologers teach that there is an unlucky hour every day in the month, i.e. during the period of the moon’s abode in every nakshatra, or lunar mansion, throughout the lunation.  This inauspicious period is called Tyajya, ‘rejected.’  Its mean length is one hour and thirty-six minutes, European time.  The precise moment when this period commences differs in each nakshatra, or (which comes to the same thing) in every day in the lunar month.  It sometimes occurs in the daytime and sometimes at night;—­see Colonel Warren’s Kala Sankatila, Madras, 1825, p. 388.  The Tamil pronunciation of the word is tiyacham, and when the nominative case-termination of the word is rejected, as all the Tamil case-terminations were by the Mahomedans, who were probably Marco Polo’s informants, it becomes tiyach, to which form of the word Marco’s Choiach is as near as could be expected.” (MS. Note.)[2]

The phrases used in the passage from Ramusio to express the time of day are taken from the canonical hours of prayer.  The following passage from Robert de Borron’s Romance of Merlin illustrates these terms:  Gauvain “quand il se levoit le matin, avoit la force al millor chevalier del monde; et quant vint a heure de prime si li doubloit, et a heure de tierce aussi; et quant il vint a eure de midi si revenoit a sa premiere force ou il avoit este le matin; et quant vint a eure de nonne et a toutes les seures de la nuit estoit-il toudis en sa premiere force.” (Quoted in introd. to Messir Gauvain, etc., edited by C.  Hippeau, Paris, 1862, pp. xii.-xiii.) The term Half Tierce is frequent in mediaeval Italian, e.g. in Dante:—­