d.

It was in winter that Mr. Francis Day arrived--a time of the year when
Madras looks its best and when the sea-horses are not always at their
wildest tricks; and Mr. Francis Day landed without accident, and was
pleased with the scene. There are always breakers, however, on the
Coromandel Coast, and Mr. Day found the landing so exciting that in
his report to the Council at Masulipatam he wrote of 'the heavy and
dangerous surf'. But after an inspection of the surroundings he was
satisfied with the conditions; he considered that at the mouth of the
Cooum river there was an advantageous site for a commercial
settlement; and the local ruler, the Naik of Poonamallee, following
the advice of the Portuguese authorities, encouraged him in the idea
of an English settlement within the Poonamallee domain.

It is not surprising that Mr. Francis Day was pleased with what he
saw; for Madras is not without beauty. In those idyllic days,
moreover, the Cooum river, which was known then as the Triplicane
river--and which even to-day can be beautiful, although for the
greater part of the year it is no more than a stagnant ditch--must
have been a limpid water-way; and to Mr. Francis Day, seeing it in
winter, in which season the current swollen by the rain sometimes
succeeds in bursting the bar, it must have appeared almost as a noble
river, rushing down to the great sea--a river such as might well have
deserved the erection of a town on its banks. The fact that the
Portuguese had been at Mylapore for more than a century showed that a
settlement was full of promise--and the more so for men with the
energy of the English Company's representatives; and the conditions
were such that Mr. Francis Day felt himself justified in entering into
negotiations with the Naik for the grant of an estate extending five
miles along the shore and a mile inland.

The negotiations were successful: but the Naik was subordinate to the
lord of the soil, the Raja of Chandragiri, who was the living
representative of the once great and magnificent Hindu empire of
Vijianagar; and any grant that was made by the Naik of Poonamallee
had to be confirmed by the Raja if it was to be made valid. Two or
three miles from Chandragiri station, on the Katpadi-Gudur line of
railway, is still to be seen the Rajah-Mahal, the palace in which the
Raja handed to Mr. Francis Day the formal title to the land. The
palace still exists, and it is a fine building, though partly in
ruin