"A Roman Catholic French priest, Abbé Jean-Antoine Dubois, who came to India in 1792 and returned to France after thirty-two years, in 1823, also records the travails of the Christians of Canara. He mentions: When the late Tippoo Sultan sought to extend his own religious creed all over his dominions, and make by little and little all the inhabitants in Mysore converts to Islamism, he wished to begin this fanatical undertaking with the native Christians living in his country, at the most odious to him, on the score their religion. In consequence, in the year 1784, he gave secret orders to his officers in the different districts, to make the most diligent inquiries after the places where the Christians were to be found, and to cause the whole of them to be seized on the same day, and conducted under strong escorts to Seringapatam. This order was punctually carried into execution; very few of them escaped and I have it from good authority that the aggregated number of the persons seized in this manner, amounted to more than 60,000. Sometime after their arrival at Seringapatam, Tippoo ordered the whole to undergo the rites of circumcision, and be made converts to Mahometanism. The Christians were put together during the several days after the ceremony lasted . . . after the fall of the late Tippoo Sultan most of these apostates came back to be reconciled to their former religion, saying that their apostasy had only been external, and they always kept in their hearts the true faith in Christ. Almost 2000 of them fell in my way and nearly 20,000 returned to the Mangalore district, from whence they had been carried away, and rebuilt there their former places of worship."