TOLD BY THE TOMBS
health of the inhabitants, and too much confined: the Civil Architect is therefore directed to point out a more convenient situation for one to be made of proper dimensions."
A year later, in August, 1767, the president acquainted the Board that the new burying-ground was ready; and on the same day, the 25th of August, the first funeral took place there: it was that of Mr, Wood, a writer in the Council House, whose grave was obliterated later, when the cemetery was enlarged by the addition of a piece of ground to the south, Mr. Wood's grave did not remain solitary for long. The recorded burials of the period average two hundred a year, and soon the heavy monuments arose and multiplied on every side, as the City of the Dead gathered in its denizens. A description of the Park Street cemeteries, as they appeared in 1785, is to be found in the letters of Sophia Goldborne, in "Hartly House, Calcutta:"—
"Alas! Arabella," wrote the young lady in saddened strain, "the Bengal burying-grounds (for there are two of them) bear a melancholy testimony to the truth of my observations on the short date of existence in this climate. . . . Obelisks, pagodas, etc., are erected at great expense; and the whole spot is surrounded by as well-turned a walk as those you traverse in
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