A visit subsequently to one of them served, by exhibiting once familiar things, to awaken still more forcibly the recollections of Old England, and to rekindle that love of country, which, next to that of God and kindred, is, perhaps, the noblest feeling that can swell the bosom.
I will venture to say there are many of my Anglo-Indian brethren who have experienced that which I have here feebly attempted to describe.
We landed at Chundpaul ghaut, a spot memorable in my eyes as that of my disembarkation in Calcutta some two or three months before, and of my incipient acquaintance with my grandiloquent factotum Chattermohun Ghose.
From the ghaut we proceeded, in ticca palankeens, to the fort, where Rattleton and I had been invited to take up our quarters with Lieut. Rantipole, of the Zubberdust Bullumteers, then on duty there with his company.
A wonderful place is Fort William, and a hard nut it will be for the enemies of Old England to crack, if they should ever be induced to attempt it, whether it be the wily Russian, the gallant Frenchman, or Brother Jonathan himself.
It is exceedingly wrong to be proud—very wrong indeed—I know it; but, nevertheless, I have always carried my chin at an angle of forty-five degrees with the plane of the horizon, whenever I marched into that bristling place d’armes. To other pens, less sketchy and discursive than mine, I must leave its minute description.
Suffice it for my purpose here to observe, that its extent is vast, its defences admirable, and though making little exterior show, its green slopes once passed, a battery on the broad grin meets you at every turn, as much as to say, “A-ha! I’ve caught you, eh!—on ne peut pas passer ici;” in short, its guards, griffs, adjutants, and arsenals, crows, causeways, cookboys and counterscarps, its mountains of balls and acres of cannon, are all wonderful and astonishing.
CHAPTER XIX.
The day after my arrival at Calcutta I hastened to pay my respects to the Capsicums. On reaching the portico of the house, I threw myself out of my palankeen.
“Is the general at home?”