Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/232

 Government purchased it from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, when Bishop's College was removed to Calcutta, in 1879,

The lower, or western, end of the Botanical Garden was the land which had been occupied by the old native fort of Tanna or Muckwah Thanna, which stood just about the position of the superintendent's house, and was a Mohammedan outpost built to protect the trade of the river. At the end of the seventeenth century, when the Hughly River was infested with Portuguese pirates, the Mohammedan Governor of Bengal had a chain kept at Tanna Fort, which used to be fastened across the river to bar the passage of the buccaneers should they be tempted to sail up stream, to loot the villages of the wealthy traders of the higher reaches.

After the establishment of the Botanical Gardens, Colonel Kyd continued to reside in his house at Shalimar, which he had built, and to which he was much attached. It is pathetic to read, in his will, the careful dying directions for the up-keep of his garden and the care of his household till the return to India of his relative and heir, Major, afterwards General, Alexander Kyd, and his instructions regarding the disposal of his unfinished collections of botanical drawings of the plants in the environs,