Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/211

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BLACK-TOWN.
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whether they will forbear, he goes forward in his work, resting upon the precious promises of God, that his word shall not return unto him void. The false belief of the Hindus is undermined by degrees; and here and there a word fitly spoken, or a tract given, is made the means of leading some precious soul to the cross, or of raising up a preacher of the gospel to labour among his countrymen. Blessed are they that sow beside all waters!




Black-town.

The Black-town of Madras is not, as friends at home seemed by their dread of it to suppose, the Black-hole of Calcutta, but the walled part of the city, and takes its name from the fact of its having been the residence of the natives when the English lived within the walls of the fort.

It is, in fact, a city in itself, surrounded on three sides by a fortified wall, (the fourth being commanded by the batteries of the fort,) and contains some two hundred thousand inhabitants. The great mass of these inhabitants are