THE SIEGE AND CAPTURE
soubriquet of Ditchers, continued as a ditch for nearly sixty years, by which time it had become a pestilential drain, unsightly and unsavoury to a degree. In 1799 it was filled up, and the Circular Road was made, which included in its width the ditch and a narrow road which had followed its course, on the town side for the entire length, and continued beyond it in a much wider sweep than the ditch had originally been intended to take. The improvement was greatly appreciated by Calcutta society of the period, and a newspaper paragraph quoted by the Rev. Mr. Long described how "in the Circular Road the young and the sprightly, in the fragrance of morning, wafted in the chariot of health, enjoy the gales of recreation."
From the time of his election as nawab in 1742, till his death in April, 1756, Aliverdi Khan ruled Bengal with strength and justice. He was succeeded by his grandson, a youth of twenty, whose name, Suraj-ud-Dowlah ("Lamp of the State") is infamous in history as the author of the terrible tragedy of the massacre of the Black Hole in Calcutta. This young man had been adopted when a child by his grandfather, the late nawab, who lavished on him a passionate tenderness which overlooked and forgave every fault. Such was the old man's infatuation, that, when the boy
