CHAPTER XXVIII.

CALCUTTA TO SADRAS.

Voyage-Invalid Officers and Soldiers from Rangoon-Catamarans— Madras-Schools-Native Christians-Visit to Prince Azeem Khán -Sir Thomas Munro - St. Thomas's Mount - Maha-Balipoor · Sadras.

JANUARY 30, 1826.-I again left, with a heavy heart, my dear wife and children, for the visitation of Madras and the south of India. I was accompanied by my Chaplain, Mr. Robinson, and went down by boat to Fultah, a village about twentyfive miles from Calcutta, where is a good tavern kept by a Dutch native of Chinsurah. The village is large and populous, the greater part of the people are engaged either in rearing stock for the ships at Diamond Harbour, or in making straw hats, and other trifling articles, for strangers passing up and down the river. The surrounding country is like all the rest of lower Bengal, green, perfectly level, overflowed annually by the river, and distributed in rice-fields, scattered in patches amid almost interminable groves of fruit-trees and palms. We found it much cooler than Calcutta, and less infested with musquitos; but during the greater part of the year both this place and all the country round Diamond Harbour, and thence towards the sea, is intensely unwholesome. Were it otherwise,

this would be a good place for a Missionary, and has been thought of for that purpose. The population of the whole neighbourhood appears to swarm like an ant-hill, but they are all cottagers; no traces of even moderate wealth appear among them, though their dwellings are clean, and their poverty, to a person acquainted with the few and simple wants of this climate, does not seem abject. Perhaps they do not fare the worse for having the majority of their Zemindars non-resident.

February 2.-Having received our summons the preceding evening, and the wind now blowing pleasantly from the north, we proceeded down the noble Ganges, which is here, I should apprehend, eight miles at least in breadth, following the ship to a creek called Barakatallah, a little below Calpee, and diverging from the Ganges into the Sunderbunds.

While anchored at Saugor point, on the 4th, the steam-vessel, Enterprise, passed us, with dispatches from Frome, and bringing the unwelcome intelligence, though somewhat relieved by the news of a victory, that hostilities had recommenced with the Burmese.

Sunday, February 5.-We proceeded to the Sandheads, and dismissed the pilot. I was glad to learn from him that a poor man, who had once taken us up the river, and got miserably drunk on that occasion, had been greatly impressed by some good advice I had given him, and had since remained a water-drinker. I wish my good counsels were always equally successful!

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Our voyage to Madras was tedious, and not over-pleasant; we had a steady, and, for this season, a most unusual south-west wind, from the time the pilot left us, down to February 25, when we with difficulty reached the roads. The Bussorah Merchant had a very fine and orderly crew of British seamen, without a single Lascar. There were also thirty miserable invalid soldiers, with some women and children, going back, with broken health and depraved habits, either to England, or, which seemed most probable with many of them, to die at sea. These poor people were, apparently, attentive to what Mr. Robinson and I read and prayed, and we took it by turns to visit them once a day. We were not, however, able to flatter ourselves that the impression made was at all deep, and the women, in particular, seemed incorrigible in their drunkenness, though one of them, who was actually and hopelessly dying from this cause, was a fluent talker on religious matters, and had been, she told us, religiously educated, and, while in England, a constant member of Mr. Rowland Hill's congregation.

Nothing can be more foolish, or in its effects more pernicious, than the manner in which spirits are distributed to European troops in India. Early every morning a pint of fiery, coarse, undiluted rum is given to every man, and half that quantity to every woman; this, the greater part of the new comers abhor in the first instance, or would, at all events, if left to themselves, mix with water. The ridicule of their seasoned companions, however,

deters them from doing so, and a habit of the worst kind of intemperance is acquired in a few weeks, more fatal to the army than the swords of the Jâts, or the climate of the Burmese. If half the quantity of spirit, well watered, were given at a more seasonable hour, and, to compensate for the loss of the rest, a cup of strong coffee allowed to each man every morning, the men would be quite as well pleased, and both their bodies and souls preserved from many dreadful evils. Colonel Williams, of the "Queen's Own," whom we met at Bombay, has tried this experiment with much success, and it might, with a little resolution, be universal throughout the army.

The young sailors were, many of them, very attentive and devout, when we visited the soldiers. On Sundays, indeed, all the crew were decent and orderly in their attendance on Divine Service, and the passengers, though a set little less motley than the crew, evinced much readiness to join in family prayer every evening. There was much grievous distress on board. Two officers from Rangoon and Arracan, both gentlemanly young men, the one wasted by fever to a living skeleton, without use of his legs or arms, carried up and down the ladder to and from table, his eyes almost glazed, and his voice feeble and hollow, the other, who was particularly intelligent and good-tempered, and had the traces of much strength and manly beauty, was covered from head to foot with ulcers, some of which reached quite to his bones. Both these, as well as a third, who was killing himself with dram

drinking, were going home for their health, though. the surgeon of the ship expressed great fears that all three would share the fate of a poor baby who died on board, and find their graves before they reached Europe.

Two of the female passengers were also objects. of considerable pity; the first being a young widow, whose husband, a small indigo planter, had failed in business, and destroyed himself, and who was now going home, with her child, to live on the charity of some poor relations. The other, a wretched crazy girl, also in an humble rank of life, who had fallen in love with a man in a more elevated station, and who had since hardly spoken at all, but continued crying all day long.

On the whole, what I saw and heard on board the Bussorah Merchant, was not calculated to make my voyage one of pleasure, even if I had felt less keenly my separation at Calcutta. It was a comfort to me, however, with regard to this, that the officers on board, who were all well acquainted with Madras and the south of India, coincided in opinion with what we had been previously told, that it would be highly improper for either women or children to travel there at this season of the year.

Our first view of the coast of Coromandel was of some low craggy hills near Pulicat, at some little distance inland. Madras itself is on a level beach, having these hills eight or ten miles to the north, and the insulated rock of St. Thomas about the same distance southward. The buildings and fort,