amoured of the shade of it that he decided upon building his factory there. The three villages of Sutanati, Govindpur and Calcutta, which he had purchased, soon filled up, and it was not long before people of all classes took up their abode there for trade, and so Calcutta soon became a city, and populous. The first beginnings of Calcutta as a city date from the year 1689 of the Christian era. Job Charnock died some three years after that. In those days the great plain where the Fort and Chowringhee now are was all jungle. The Fort itself formerly stood where the Custom House now stands, and Clive Street was the chief business quarter of the city. So fatal to health was Calcutta at one time considered, that the English gentlemen who had escaped with their lives during the year, would annually meet together on the 15th of November and offer their congratulations to each other. One prominent characteristic of Englishmen is to have everything about them scrupulously clean, and disease gradually diminished as sanitary precautions came more and more into vogue. But the people of Bengal do not take this lesson to heart: to the present day there are tanks near the houses of our wealthiest citizens, which smell so bad that one can hardly approach them.
In former days the duties connected with the Revenue and Criminal Courts and the Police Administration of Calcutta devolved upon a single Englishman: he had a Bengali official as his subordinate, and he himself was called the Jemadar. Later on, there came to be other Courts; and with the view of checking the high-handedness of the English in the country, the Supreme Court was established. The administration of the Police was made an independent charge, and was very ably conducted. In the year 1798 of the Christian era, Sir John Richardson
