254 M. CONSTANT'S DIAMONDS book iii
CHAPTER XXII1
Concerning an affair which was raised unseasonably for the Author in the Council at Batavia.
There are two Councils in Batavia, the Council of the Fort, at which the General2
presides, where the affairs of the Company are discussed; and the
Council that sits in the Town Hall, and deals with the police and the
minor disputes which arise among the citizens. M. Faure, a member of
the Town Council, was one of those who came to visit me on my arrival,
and during nine or ten days he, with one of his friends, was with me
four times. Both of them spoke frequently of M. Constant, who had been
Commander at Gombroon, and was for many years the second officer of the
factory at Surat, where he had amassed much wealth. He had often
trusted me with a part of it, and we had always been good friends. One
day, as I was about to leave Surat on my way to the diamond mine, he
asked me to purchase diamonds on his account to the extent of 16,000 3
rupees' worth, giving me a letter of credit for that sum on Golkonda,
where it was paid me, and I invested it as he desired. I expected on my
return to find him at Surat; but during my journey he had received
orders to start at once for Batavia, and as soon as he got there he
married the widow of General Vandime and went with her to Holland. I
was much surprised on my return to Surat to find that he had left
without giving orders to any of his friends, Dutch or English, to
receive what I had for him, and send it to him by one of the vessels
which go to England. I remained at Surat about two months,
1 This chapter is omitted in the English Translation by John Phillips, but an abstract of its contents is included in ch. xxi.
* [Governor-General].
3
£1,800. (See Index for further references to this traffic carried on by
Tavernier on behalf of the Dutch officials.) At a latter period we find
English officials engaging in the same trade. (See Colonel Yule's
account of the Pitt diamond in Hedges' Diary, Hakluyt Society,
iii. 91, 161 f.) Thomas Pitt, was Governor of Madras from 1698 to 1709.
Another Pitt, Governor from 1730-35, George Morton or Moreton Pitt,
appears to have been notable, also, for his private trade in diamonds. (Kistna Manual, 106 n.; Wheeler, Madras in the Olden Time, 505.)
