CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
Marquis of Hastings replaced the "temporary bungalow " which Lord Wellesley had built by a handsome and suitable mansion, and Barrackpore became the country residence of the Governors-General during the hot-weather months, at a time when "the Hills" were still unknown. At the present day, Government House, Barrackpore, is, what it has been for many years past, a week-end retreat for the Viceroy during the four months which he spends in Calcutta every year.
Just below Barrackpore Park a group of twenty-four small Hindu temples, clustered together, form an imposing and picturesque object on the bank, as seen from the river. These, the Tittaghur temples, are of comparatively recent date, having been built by a wealthy Hindu family about the close of the eighteenth century. They mark, however, a locality which for long years before that period had an evil reputation as the headquarters of a family of Thugs, or phanseegars—the stranglers. The Thugs were a caste of hereditary robbers who infested the highways of India, not only robbing their victims, but strangling them by means of a handkerchief fastened in a running noose. It was not till the nineteenth century was well advanced that these murderous highwaymen were effectually dealt with, when Colonel Sleeman, in charge of a
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