CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
factors have a great many good houses standing pleasantly on the river's side; and all of them have pretty gardens to their houses. The settlement at Chinsurah is wholly under the Dutch Company's Government. It is about a mile long, and about the same breadth, well inhabited by Armenians and the natives. It is contiguous to Hughly, and affords sanctuary for many poor natives, when they are in danger of being oppressed by the mogul's governor or his harpies,"
Chinsurah was given up to the English about the year 1825, when the Dutch received in exchange the British possessions in Sumatra. Some five years later the Government pulled down the old Dutch Government House, and the fort, Fort Gustavus, to make way for ranges of barracks, which were later abandoned as unsuitable. The old fort bore the date 1687 on its northern gate, and 1692 on the south gate, and contained in its structure some immense beams of Java teak, which had been brought up from Batavia, and which "were found to be as sound as the day they were inserted into the building."
According to a writer in the Calcutta Review of sixty years ago,[1] the church at Chinsurah—
- ↑ No. VIII., vol. iv„ Dec, 1845.
220
