CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
Orissa and Bengal, and to lay waste whole tracts of country. Terror and consternation spread through the land, and everywhere the people fled into the jungles, or gathered in the towns and larger villages in the hope of obtaining some protection by their numbers. In Calcutta the native population undertook to dig a wide ditch which cavalry could not readily cross, round the three villages which formed the town. The ditch was to extend for seven miles, forming a semi-circle round three sides of the town, the fourth side being protected by the river. It was begun in 1742, at Chitpore, and followed the line of Circular Road southward as far as Jaun Bazar Street; here it turned to the south-west, and was intended to take a line which would have crossed the Chowringhee Road at the junction of Middleton Street, and, continuing in the same direction, would have reached the river at Hastings, about where the Commissariat buildings and jetty are now situated. This latter part, however, was not completed; for by the time some four miles of the ditch had been dug the Nawab of Bengal had come to terms with the Mahrattas, who agreed to leave Bengal unmolested in return for a yearly tribute, or chout. The unfinished Mahratta Ditch, which obtained for many generations of Calcutta citizens the
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