xx India

Ports of call. Strange fascinating lands beckon us. Bit us rebel in their exotic spenders. Come with us as we head for ports of call.

From the dazzling crest of the Himalayas to the humid shores of the Indian Ocean, stretches a timeless mystic land, rich with a pattern of life through forgotten centuries. India. Its fond dear guarded by forbidding peaks, wears always the sense of rooting peril. In the Midland Deserts, dust clouds dance away from creaking primitive water-wheels. The steaming lowland villages throb incessantly with the

rhythm of native drums. Up and down over the forested roads of India, past glittering princes, peasants, half-naked holymen, soldiers, elephants and tigers roam the jungles. Temples, mosques, shrines of a hundred gods and half-gods, crowd the cities and countryside. Teaming with life, particle of jewels and gold, land of fabulous wealth and of famine.

India. Along India's northern border, the protective wall of the Himalayas is broken by the Kiber Pass, through which it poured the conquerors of her ancient civilization. Macedonians, Afghans, Mongols came, saw, conquered and disappeared in the dust, while Mother India placidly endured.

Then came the soldiers of the Crescent, 1536. After the Mohammedan Babur, the Muslim horde swept through the Khyber and found in the Mogul dynasty, the golden age of India had begun. Unequal since the world began was the magnificence of the Babari court of Delhi.

A river of rubies, pearls, emeralds and diamonds poured through the hands of the artisans, fashioning palaces and thrones of the great Moguls. And as tales of this spread spread through the world, European nations began to covet India's opulence.

In the year 1601, in the Hall of Private Audience, the great Mughal Akbar has received an English emissary. The Majesty Queen Elizabeth of England has granted a charter to the East India Company, and with its sole right of trading with all countries lying beyond the Cape of Good Hope or straight to Magellan during a period of fifteen years.