makes an excellent curry-stone. Caste scruples have not interfered with the preparation of curry-stuffs or the building of houses with the spoils of a Christian cemetery. A few engraved stones have been rescued in various parts of the Presidency; numbers that might have borne valuable family records and preserved names that live in history have been lost for ever.
Of late years Government has interfered to preserve old burial-grounds where Europeans have been interred from desecration and destruction; and a record has been made of the most important of the names mentioned.
The great plain of the Carnatic lying between the Coromandel Coast on the east and the plateau lands of Mysore on the west was once studded with forts of various degrees of strength. Many of them have been utterly destroyed like that at Trichinopoly. Some are in ruins like Fort St. David and Gingee. A few remain intact like Fort St. George in Madras, although, as a place of defence, it would stand little chance if the artillery of modern days were brought to bear upon it.
The earliest were mere earthworks faced with sun-dried bricks. They were sufficiently strong to protect the inhabitants from such aggressors as were armed only with pikes and bows and arrows. When the more warlike Mahrattas descended upon the Carnatic from the northwest, they took possession of the old mud forts without difficulty, and pulling them down, rebuilt them with dressed stone. Their method of building showed considerable military skill, and it has been conjectured that they had Europeans among them to teach them the art of fortification. One of the best specimens of fort building by the Mahrattas is to be found at Vellore, whither I went to pay a visit during my residence at Trichinopoly. The fort is situated on the plain near some rocky hills which at the
