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Updated: June 3, 2025
Farther south Cape petrels appeared; and still farther, large numbers of the powerful albatross came gliding round us on their wide-spreading wings. The Cape of Storms was rounded without a storm; and once more the Governor Harcourt entered the Hoogly. It appeared to me as if a lifetime had passed away since I was last at Calcutta, though scarcely two years had elapsed since I left it.
Pagoda and an Immense Stone Idol. Southern India. City of Madras. Want of a Harbor. In and about the Capital. Voyage through the Bay of Bengal. The Hoogly River. Political Capital of India. A Crazy King. The Himalayas. Sunset and Sunrise at Darjeeling.
Clive proceeded with his usual promptitude; he routed the garrison which the nabob had placed in Fort William, recovered Calcutta, and took Hoogly by storm. Surajah Dowlah, who was as cowardly as he was cruel, now sought to negotiate peace, but at the same time he secretly urged the French to come to his assistance. This duplicity could not be concealed from Clive and Watson.
He and I were still discussing in low tones our narrow escape from a disastrous collision, some ten minutes having elapsed since we had lost sight of the Hoogly, when suddenly a faint crash was heard, somewhere away on our port quarter, immediately followed by shouts and cries, and a confused popping of pistols, which lasted about a minute; when all became as suddenly silent again.
"D'ye hear that rumpus away out on the larboard quarter, sir?" hailed one of the men on the forecastle. "Ay, ay, my lad, we hear it; we're not asleep at this end of the ship!" answered Winter. "Depend upon it, George," he continued to me, "the Hoogly has been boarded and carried by a Frenchman. There!" as the sounds ceased, "it is all over, whatever it is.
There is usually such a surf on the shore that nothing but the native boats can weather it; and when high winds prevail, it is too much even for them. We embark by steamship from Madras, and after a voyage of nearly a thousand miles up the coast and Hoogly River, land at Calcutta, which is the political capital of India, though since the Suez Canal has been opened, Bombay rivals it commercially.
But it may be taken for granted that many Chota Lords and Burro Lords also would come and go, and much water would pass down the Hoogly, before the family coach of Nayanjore would be furnished up to pay a visit to Government House. One day I took Kailas Babu aside, and told him in a whisper: "Thakur Dada, I was at the Levee yesterday, and the Chota Lord happened to mention the Babes of Nayanjore.
Of the nine hundred Europeans, only six hundred arrived at that time at the mouth of the Hoogly, the largest ship, the Cumberland, with three hundred men on board, having grounded on the way. The remainder of the fleet, consisting of three ships of war, five transports, and a fire ship, reached Falta between the 11th and 20th of December.
"Not at all, Tim," Charlie said, "the Hoogly is one of the sacred rivers of India, and the people on its banks, instead of burying their dead, put them into the river and let them drift away." "I calls it a bastly custom, yer honor, and I wonder it is allowed.
The time we thus spent at sea was four months and five days. Every now and then speedier voyages were made, but a few years previously this voyage would have been deemed rapid. The Duke of Buccleugh, on her next voyage to India, went to pieces on a sandbank at the mouth of the Hoogly, but happily the weather was moderate, and passengers and crew were saved.
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