105 
1893.] 
C. R. Wilson — Topography of old Fort William. 
side 100. It had four bastions mounting each ten guns. The curtains 
were four feet thick, and like the factory of Cossimbazar, terraces, 
which were the roofs of chambers, formed the top of the ramparts ; 
and windows belonging to these chambers were in several places opened 
in the curtains. The gateway on the eastern side projected, and mounted 
five guns, three in front and one on each flank towards the bastions. 
Under the western face, and on the brink of the river, was a line of 
heavy canuon mounted in embrasures of solid masonry ; and this work 
was joined to the two westeim bastions by two slender walls, 
in each of 
which was a gate of pallisadoes. In the year 1/17, warehouses had been 
built contiguous to the southern curtain, and, pi-ojecting on the outside, 
between the two bastions, rendered them useless to one another. How- 
ever the terraces of these warehouses were strong enough to bear the 
firing of three pounders which were mounted in barbett over a slight 
parapet.” There were also blocks of central buildings within the fort. 
It had two gates on the river side besides that on the east front. 
When in 1883 Mr. R. R. Bayne began to dig at the corner of 
Fairlic Place for the purpose of laying down the 
Mr. Bayne’s dis- foundations of the East India Railway House, 
he almost immediately came across remains of 
old walls built of small thin bricks such as have long ceased to be used. 
These were the walls of the old fort. Mr. Bayne followed up the indica- 
tions thus found, and in the end was able to put together an almost 
complete ground plan of the north end of the fort. As a detailed de- 
scription of these discoveries has been already placed before the Society, 
it will be quite unnecessary for me to attempt to give any further 
account of them here. Nor do I wish at present to offer any criticisms 
upon the suggestions and theories which naturally occurred to Mr. 
Bayne in connection with his discoveries. I shall at once proceed to set 
forth the results which have been obtained since 1883 by a persistent 
search of the records and by recent excavations made on the spot. 
The first great step towards completing the work so well begun 
by Mr. R. R. Bayne was taken by Mr. T. R. 
Mr. Munro’s dis- Munro, who discovered in the British Museum 
eoveiy. a CO py 0 f a large map of old Calcutta on the 
scale of 100 ft. = 1 in., dated 1753. The map, it appears, was drawn by 
a Lieutenant Wells of the Company’s Artillery, and was designed to show 
a projected new fort, but it also shows the old fort in great detail. A 
photograph of this plan was presented to the Asiatic Society in 1889 by 
Mr. Munro, and it is with this photograph in my hands that I have been 
able to carry out extensive excavations of the site of the old fort in the 
years 1891 and 1892 and thus complete the work of defining the topo- 
J. l. 14 
