PHYSICAL AND CLIMATIC FEATTEES. 9 



Men have lived a quarter of a century in Calcutta, and 

 taken their final departure from Bengal by steamer down the 

 Ganges, whose limited experience would naturally induce 

 them to describe the country as flat, monotonous, and uninte- 

 resting, judging by what they had seen in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of that inodorous town ; but had they 

 journeyed a few hundred miles away from it, their reports 

 would be very different. 



Of the climate of Bengal, all that can be said in its favour 

 :hat it is not as bad as some have made it out to be ; for, 

 whether in consequence of the great increase of cultivated 

 lands, the gradual drying-up of vast swamps, the retrogres- 

 sion of the " Soonderbuns " further seawards, and a bettor 

 knowledge of the requirements of the country and its 

 climate, acquired through the bitter experience of a century, 

 it is an undoubted fact that complaints of the climate are 

 not so common as they were, nor are fatal effects upon the 

 European constitution so painfully demonstrated as in the 

 days of Clive and Warren Hastings. The far more frequent 

 visits paid now to Europe than formerly, the almost general 

 consumption of ice, and the more moderate use of calomel 

 and the lancet by a learned profession, combined with the 

 moderation in eating and drinking practised at the present 

 time, have brought about most marked improvement, so that, 

 epidemics of cholera apart, European lives are now almost 

 as good in Bengal as in Europe or America. 



The following is a candid picture of the state of Anglo- 

 Indian society in Bengal down to the end of the Eighteenth 

 Century, as recorded by Captain Thomas Williamson, of the 

 Bengal Army, in his "Oriental Reid Sports," the second 

 edition of which was published with numerous coloured illus- 

 trations in 1819, and was dedicated in grandiloquent style to 



Most Gracious Majesty George the Third : * Such was the 



a it to which every species of excess was then carried, that 



the most intimate friendship was generally the shortest. I 



cannot give a better idea of the state of society in Bengal, 



upwards of twenty years ago, than by observing that I 



