Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/465

Book X. The Mount is a craggy rock, of which the base is oblong from east to west, and a mile round. It has two eminences, of which that to the eastward is much the highest, being 150 feet, and has at the top a small level plot, in which stands a church, the substitute of a much more ancient structure, dedicated, by the ancient Christians of Coromandel and Malabar, to a St. Thomas, whom the present erroneously suppose to be the apostle. A flight of broad steps leading to the church winds on the eastern side, just where the hill itself begins to round to the north. A village of country-houses, built by the English, extends from the foot of the Mount about 600 yards to the east, and consists of two rows of houses situated in gardens separated by a lane. The row which faces the south fronts a pleasant plain, and the walls of its enclosures as well on this side as on the other, where they skirt the lane, are on a straight line. The enclosure which terminated the front row, to the east, was the garden-house of Colonel Lawrence; it occupied 100 yards to the plain, and, as all the others of this row, the same extent backward to the lane; the gardens on the other side of the lane were not all enclosed with walls, but some with banks and hedges; all, however, capable of some defence. The last enclosure in this row, which from its owner was called Carvalho's garden, projected 50 yards farther out to the east than Lawrence's, the last in the front row, of which in consequence it flanked the eastern side: and about 200 yards out on the plain to the south, directly opposite to Carvalho's stood the ruins of five or six mud houses, with several trees surrounding a small brick building, which had once contained a swamy, or idol. This station flanked the ground before the front row of enclosures. The lane that separated the two rows continued nearly in a straight line from the east, and terminated at the bottom of the steps leading to the summit of the Mount. On the right hand of the steps was a craggy path from the plain on the south, and on the left hand an outlet leading round the north side of the Mount: contiguous to the path on the right, and within pistol-shot of the steps, was a house which looked upon the outlet to the north; and the last house on the other side at this end of the lane commanded