Page:Early English adventurers in the East (1917).djvu/310

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EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

four quarters of the globe; it is the home of philosophies and religions and the headquarters of a political movement which is profoundly influencing the course of events in India. If the British had done nothing else in India the creation of Calcutta on what was little better than a swamp would be a conclusive testimony to the genius of the race for the successful management of alien peoples.

Job Charnock did not live to see even the first glory of the city which he more than any other may be said to have founded. Full of years as they were reckoned for the Englishman at that time in India, and weighed down with the cares and responsibilities of his position, he died on January 10, 1693, in Calcutta. He was buried in St. John's Churchyard in the city in a grave which is said to contain also the remains of his much loved Indian wife, who predeceased him. Some four years after his death his son-in-law, Charles Eyre, erected over the tomb an elaborate mausoleum, which was the receptacle of the bodies of a number of his descendants who died in the latter part of the seventeenth and the first half of The eighteenth century. This striking structure still stands, an object of interest to the curious visitor to Calcutta and a silent reminder of one to whom the city owes so much.

Few men of note in the early annals of British India have been the subject of acuter controversy than Job Charnock. Even before his death there had gathered about him a wealth of picturesque legend which distinguished him from the ordinary type of English adventurer of that day. As Chanak, a master mind who had by his almost super-human powers defeated the Mogul forces at Hooghly, he