CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
bits of local scandal, and considerably coloured by a strong prejudice against the "Conscript Fathers of the Colony," as he terms them, who appear to have got the better of the worthy seaman and shrewd trader in bargaining. This gossiping chronicler tells us—
"Fort William was built an irregular tetragon of brick and mortar called puckah, which is a composition of brick-dust, lime, molasses, and cut hemp, and, when it comes to be dry, is as hard and tougher than firm stone or brick."
The Fort stood on the bank of the river which flowed along what is now the Strand Road. The site has been so carefully identified and marked out in recent years that but little imagination is required to reconstruct in fancy the high walls with their bastions and buttresses which enclosed the space lying between Fairlie Place and Koila Ghat Street. With the exception of the church and the hospital, all the official buildings stood within the Fort walls. The hospital, "where many go in to undergo the penance of physick, but few come out to give any account of its operation," adjoined the burial-ground where Garstin's Buildings now stand. All other public buildings, the Government House, the barracks, the factors' houses, the writers' quarters, the
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