126 
C. H. Wilson — Topography of old Fort William. [No. 2, 
Difference between 
these views and those 
of Mr. Bayne. 
Black Hole is 18 ft. by 14 ft. 10 in. This allows just 267 sq. ft. of area 
for 146 persons, or less than 2 sq. ft. each. 20 
The result of all this fresh discussion is to place the site of the 
Black Hole prison immediately to the north of 
the site fixed for it by Mr. Bayne, so that Mr. 
Bayne’s conclusion was not so far wrong. Mr. 
Bayne, however, arrived at his conclusion from 
two utterly false premises. His first premise was that the south-east 
corner of the fort was just like the north-east corner. This was com- 
pletely refuted by Mr. Munro in 1889 when he produced Wells’s plan of 
the fort. Mr. Bayne’s second premise was, that the dimensions of the fort 
stated by Orme in the text of his history and shown in the accompanying 
plan, were absolutely correct, and Mr. Bayne still held to this belief even 
though he discovered that there was an error somewhere in Orme’s plan 
when he tried to superpose it upon Simms’s Survey of Calcutta. The 
excavations which I have made prove that the dimensions given by Orme 
are only approximately correct, accurate enough for the purposes of his 
history, but not accurate enough for the purpose of settling minute 
points of topography. Fortunately for Mr. Bayne, the errors of his two 
premises counteracted each other, and thus, when he made an excavation 
in the passage north of the General Post Office, where he expected to 
find the Black Hole, he actually did come across one of its walls. But, 
like words, walls cannot be interpreted apart from their context. Mr. 
Bayne was prevented at the time from finding the right context, and he 
therefore failed to understand these walls ; I have merely been more 
fortunate in my opportunities, and have been able to secure the right 
context. 
Only a few more miscellaneous points as to the topography of the 
old fort remain to be mentioned. Besides the 
Miscellaneous two drains already spoken of, which I found by 
the east gate, I also came across a piece ot 
another old surface drain running along the west side of the verandah 
which extended before the chambers built inside the east curtain. This 
drain is 4 ft. wide at the top and 2 ft. at the bottom. Its eastern edge is 
5 ft. distant internally from the verandah wall 0 2 Z> 2 . There is also an 
old well about 50 ft. east of the east wall of the Governor’s House in the 
fort, and 23 ft. south of its central line, which may have been part of 
2° The only cross wall shown in Wells’s plan which I liavo not accounted for is 
the wall botween the rooms v and o. If what I have said as to the other cross walls 
is correct, this cross wall should come between 66, and cc,. It could not then liavo 
been a substantial wall as it would have boon built over the subterranean chamber 
b'b\ c'c'i. Could this wall have boen meant for tlio wall b'b\ ? 
