The new volume produced by the Hakluyt Society, Relations of
Golconda in the early Seventeenth Century (Bernard Quaritch, 11), has the advantage of being edited by Mr. W. H. Moreland, well known as an authority on Mogul India, and deals with a short-lived Moslem Kingdom which welcomed the early Dutch and English merchants. Golconda was part of the Northern Deccan, with a stretch of the coast north of Madras, and in 1614-22, when the two Dutch and the one English " relations " here printed were written, it had a flourishing textile industry and was deriving much wealth from the newly- developed diamond field at Kollur. Methwold, the well- known English trader whose narrative is taken from Purchas, was stationed at Masulipatam, and thence visited the diamond workings, of which he gives an interesting description. These were large square pits, and the baskets of reddish earth were handed up from one labourer to another, for lack of pulleys and ropes. A hundred thousand people had been attracted to the barren district by the finds, and they found their living costly. The description recalls that of Kimberley, except for the great mountain and the great river between which lay Golconda's diamonds.
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