CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
and, lastly, came alterations and additions which crowned the old bare range with domes, and masked it with a stately fagade, and Writers' Buildings were lost in the Bengal Secretariat.
Before leaving this, the oldest quarter of the town, it is well to recall that, up to about 1810, the southern portion of Dalhousie Square, a strip of land about two hundred and fifty yards long by fifty yards wide, at the south-west end of which stood the stables of the Governor's Bodyguard, was the Parade Ground, on which the Militia and Volunteers of Calcutta paraded.
It was in 1752 that the Worshipful Court of Directors sent orders to Calcutta that a body of Militia should be formed; and, in September of that year, the Calcutta Board reported that—
"in obedience to your Honour's orders, Captain Commandant George Minchin proposes, as soon as the weather sets in a little more temperate, to fix and appoint proper sergeants and corporals, out of the military, for instructing such of the inhabitants as are unacquainted with the manual exercise, when we shall appoint officers to command them."
In November, accordingly, the new officers of the Militia, Colonel Cruttenden in command,
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