Page:History of the French in India.djvu/83

LENOIR EMBELLISHES PONDICHERY. 61 important of all, looking towards the sea. About the chap. same period too, commenced, on a great scale, the n ' embellishment of the town. Under the auspices of 1726. Lenoir and his successor this made great progress. On the west side of the Governor's house a beautiful garden was laid out, planted with fine avenues, which served as public walks. In the midst of this garden was a large and well-furnished building, destined to be the residence of foreign princes and ambassadors. Near this was the college of the Jesuits, containing twelve or fifteen priests, to whom was committed the care of the educa- tion of the youth of the colony. There was a house also for the foreign missions, containing two or three priests, and another near it, for the Capuchins, with seven or eight. One of the conditions on which the land had been granted to the French required toleration of the Hindu religion ; consequently the two pagodas, or temples, which they found there ; still remained. All the streets were regularly traced out, broad and at right angles, and the houses joined one another. The sea face of the town was distant about a hundred yards from the sea, which at full tide had never more than two feet of water. The largest ships were forced to ride about three miles distant from the shore. Its fortifications, as made after the restoration of the town by the Dutch, and added to by Lenoir and Dumas, were sufficient to keep out a native enemy, but it was not until the war of 1743 that Dupleix succeeded in making them sufficient to repel European attack. The native town was divided from the European town by a canal ; the houses in this were solidly constructed of wood and chunam — the latter being a composition made of shells ground to powder, and wrought into a kind of paste, which, by exposure to the air, becomes as white, and almost as hard, as stone. The Government of Pondichery consisted of a Supreme Council composed of not less than five members, presided