240 ON THE COKOMANDEL COAST
trifling, said the old soldier, who was in the same regiment, some difference at mess with an officer in the artillery. The next morning they rode out at dawn to the retired spot behind the house, and the tragedy was enacted. On the following morning the narrator of the story formed one of the firing party at the grave.
A well-known figure, familiar during the last half of the nineteenth century to the residents of Trichinopoly native as well as European was that of Bishop Caldwell. He and his wife were frequent visitors at the house of his son-in-law, the Rev. J. L. Wyatt of the S.P.G. Mission. Robert Caldwell came out to India in 1841 as a missionary. He was an indefatigable student, and was learned in several of the sciences. Sanscrit and the Dravidian languages were his special study, as being the foundation of all the vernaculars of Southern India. He was not long in mastering Tamil, one of the most difficult of the Dravidian group. As soon as he knew sufficient Tamil to speak to the people in their own tongue, he began his missionary labours among them, moving about from village to village, far from the Europeans and out of the beaten track of Governors and commanders-in-chief. He was a man of magnificent physique. One of his assistant missionaries described him as a fine man, over six feet high, and weighing twelve stone. He was well built, and was endowed with handsome features. Few Englishmen, even if they ever dreamed of attempting such a thing, could walk as he did in the heat of the Tropics from Ootacamund to Tinnevelly; the distance by rail is more than three hundred miles. When he first arrived at Idaiyangudi he spent nearly all his time in travelling about his district. He passed the heat of the day in village schoolrooms, while he slept at night in the open air, because of the bloodthirsty insects which haunted the native houses. He was fortunately blessed with a
