Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/127

 CAREY AND SRIRAMPUR MISSION 103 After six years in North Bengal as a_ missionary, scholar, and indigo-planter, Carey found that a few in- significant villages of two or three dozen mud-walled cottages hardly afforded sulficient scope for his missionary work. He was forming the project of a Mission Settle- ment on the Moravian model, but in Work at Madnabati 1799 the indigo works at Madnabati এ had to be given up. Carey had been thinking of taking another small indigo factory in the neighbourhood, when he learned that he was soon to be joined in his missionary work by four colleagues from England. The expected _ re-inforce- ment consisted of Joshua Marshman and his wife, William Ward, Du.niel Brunsdon,' and William Grant. The original intention was to proceed to Maldah and settle with Carey at Madna- bati. They arrived off Caleutta on October 12, 1799 in an American ship; but instead of landing, they proceeded to Sririmpur where they could be safe under the protection of the Danish flag. Their object in Reinforcement from England. Srirampnr, why choosing Srirampur as a mission- chosen as a mission-. . ‘ ৮, centre is thus given by Carey®; “At Serampore we can settle as missiona- ries, which is not allowed here; and the great ends of the mission, particularly the printing of the Seriptures, seem much more likely to be answered in that situation...In that part of the country inhabitants are far more numerous than in this; and other missionaries may be there permitted to join us, which here it seems they will not.” In the beginning of the last century Sririmpur was a kind of Alsatia—‘a city of refuge’; and the persecuted missionaries Biography, vol. i, pp. 170-72.
 * For a sketch of Brunsdon’s life, see ৬. 11, Carey, Oriental Christian
 * Smith, op. cit. p. 88.