Two of his
staff accompanied him from the vigorous young West to the
immemorially old East.
He succeeded as Viceroy Lord Dufferin, who had also held the
appointment of Governor-General of Canada up to 1878, after which
he had served as British Ambassador both at Petrograd and at
Constantinople, before proceeding to India in 1884.
Lord Minto, too, in later years filled both positions, serving in
Canada from 1898 to 1904, and in India from 1905 to 1910.
Whether in 1690 Job Charnock made a wise selection in fixing his
trading-station where Calcutta now stands, may be open to doubt.
He certainly had the broad Hooghly at his doors, affording plenty
of water not only for trading-vessels, but also for men-of-war in
cases of emergency. Still, from the swampy nature of the soil, and
its proximity to the great marshes of the Sunderbunds, Calcutta
could never be a really healthy place. An arrival by water up the
Hooghly unquestionably gives the most favourable impression of the
Indian ex-capital, though the river banks are flat and
uninteresting. The Hooghly is one of the most difficult rivers in
the world to navigate, for the shoals and sand-banks change almost
daily with the strong tides, and the white Hooghly pilots are men
at the very top of their profession, and earn some L2000 a year
apiece.
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