grades. His leisure hours were spent in learning the native languages and in such recreations as suited his purse, his temperate habits, and his fine social instincts. In those days all business was over by noon, when the younger men dined together in the common hall. Then came the afternoon siesta, to which punkahs were still unknown. Towards sunset our countrymen took the air in palankeens, or glided in native barges along the broad river. The factory buildings and 'godowns' were surrounded by the brick walls and bastions of a fort which held a garrison of about two hundred men, most of whom were Sepoys. Within the walls were also good gardens and fish-ponds, and a hospital for the sick. The Company's servants were not ill lodged in quarters overlooking the river. A chaplain read prayers to them daily, and preached on Sundays. Justice, of a rude and summary kind, chiefly in the shape of fines and floggings, was administered by a Mayor, from whose sentence an appeal lay to the Council itself[1].
Calcutta, as described by one who saw it in those days, was already a 'large, fair, and populous' town, containing 'many private English merchants and several rich Indian traders' who supplied the Company with goods brought down for export from inland. Across the Húglí were docks for repairing and careening the Company's ships. The trade of
- ↑ Wheeler's Early Records of British India. Dr. Busteed's Echoes from Old Calcutta.
