e sea has
receded.]

The 'sandy beach' has been waked from its longaeval placidity. Trains
of bullock-carts are lumbering along new-made tracks, bringing stone
and laterite and bricks and timber from various centres; and endless
files of coolies, with baskets on their heads, are bringing sand from
the summer-dry edges of the bed of the Cooum river. In the foreground
of the picture, scores of chattering village-labourers, from
Triplicane and other hamlets hard by, are working under the directions
of the mechanical employees of the Company, chipping stone, mixing
lime, sawing timber, carrying bricks and stones and mortar, or laying
them adroitly in place, with little dependence on line and level.

In the course of a few months the buildings were sufficiently advanced
for occupation. The main building was the 'factory,' which formerly
signified a mercantile office; and it was here that the Company's
chief officials, who were styled 'factors' (agents), assisted by
writers and apprentices, transacted the Company's business, and were
also lodged. Included amongst the buildings were warehouses for the
Company's goods, and also barrack-like residences for the Company's
subordinate British employees, civil and military, according to their
rank.

From the very beginning the settlement was called Fort St. George, but
it was several years before the buildings were surrounded by a high
and fortified wall. It was in no spirit of military aggression that
the Company's agents enclosed their settlement with a bastioned
rampart, from whose battlements big cannon frowned on all sides round.
The Company's representatives were 'gentle merchaunts,' to whom peace
spelt prosperity; but the times were lawless, and the gentle merchants
were wise enough to recognize that days might come when it would be
necessary to defend their merchandise and themselves, as well as the
town of Madras, from the roving robber or the princely raider or the
revengeful trade-rival, and that military preparedness was a dictate
of prudence. The days came!

On such occasions the excitement in Fort St. George must have been
great. We can imagine the anxiety with which, when the sentry gave the
alarm, the gentle merchants climbed upon the walls and looked out at
the horsemen that were to be descried in the distance, and asked one
another disconsolately whether it was in peace or in war that they
came. A brief notice of some of the occasions on which the Fort was in