GAZETTEER
latter replaced St. Mary's church, which stood just south of the parade-ground. This was originally called Holy Trinity and was built in 1850 at a cost of Rs. 2,600 on land granted the year before by the Mahárája of Vizianagram, and was consecrated by Bishop Dealtry in 1852. The building was badly injured by the cyclone of 1867 (p. 153), afterwards cracked badly, and was abandoned as dangerous in 1899. The Protestant cemetery is not far from its site. The graves in this date from 1811 to 1876. The earliest are those of three subalterns of the 10th Regiment of Native Infantry and a cenotaph to the Colonel and a Major of the same regiment. Other tombs are those of three officers who succumbed during the operations of 1834-36 in this district and Ganjám, and of several other members of the various regiments which have been cantoned here.
Along the road to Bimlipatam are the deserted race-course and grand stand, and a dilapidated racquet-court built about 1855. Ichabod is indeed writ large all about the cantonment. Nowadays it leads only a subdued existence, but forty years ago things were very different. In 1862 the Collector strenuously opposed a suggestion that Vizianagram should be made the head-quarters of the district, on the ground that it would be impossible for the Collector to do any work in so frivolous a spot. He said it was 'a scene of endless pastime: a race-course, a pack of hounds, cheetah-hunting, ram-fights, balls, nautches, joustings, junketings of every kind.'
The native part of the town offers a marked contrast to the cantonment, and is a bustling place. One wide street, called Santapéta, leads through it, and in this are many excellent two-storeyed houses belonging to wealthy Kómatis, their wide verandahs supported on Moorish arches; a conspicuous white temple to the well-known Kómati goddess Kanyaká Paramésvari, ornamented with little domes of the Rájputana pattern; and the clock-tower and market mentioned on p. 214.
The Rája's fort lies south of this street, on the shore of the Pedda Cheruvu. It is a great square erection of brick and stone, measuring about 250 yards each way, surrounded by the remains of a ditch, and having a big bastion at each corner. Two main entrances lead into it, one from the south by the tank, and the other (the elaborate gateway over which was constructed about 30 years ago) from the north. In front of the former are now being erected, under canopies of carved Puri stone, bronze statues of the late Mahárája and his father and a fountain to perpetuate their memory. Within the fort are the apartments of the Rája and his family and a building, called the Móti Mahál,
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