Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/49

 "William Hamilton, Physician, in the service of the English Company, who had accompanied the English Ambassador to the enlightened Presence, and having made his own name famous in the four quarters of the earth by the cure of the Emperor, the Asylum of the World Muhammad Farruk Siyar the victorious: and with a thousand difficulties having obtained permission from the Court which is the refuge of the universe, to return to his country: by the Divine decree, on the fourth of December, 1717, died in Calcutta, and is buried here."

This latter inscription was apparently composed by an officer of the emperor's court, who was sent to Calcutta by his royal master to obtain confirmation of the news of Hamilton's death, which Farruk Syar imagined had been fabricated to appease him on the failure of the surgeon to return.

The poor emperor himself closed his splendid career tragically enough within three years of Hamilton's death, when, dragged from his throne and blinded by his own rebellious courtiers, he "the Asylum of the World," was brutally murdered in his dungeon after two months' miserable captivity.

With a confirmation of their rights as legal owners of their settlement and the surrounding