Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/74

60 in England. There my heart expanded with hope and joy at the prospect of the speedy conversion of the heathen; but here the sight of the apparent impossibility requires a strong faith to support the spirits.”

It was in this suburb of “Chindaput," or, more properly, Chintadrepettah, that we found our first Indian home. At the present day, more than forty years since Henry Martyn visited Madras, and walked in the streets of Chintadrepettah, a great change is seen to have taken place. From a village of two hundred houses, it has grown into a large and flourishing district with fifteen thousand inhabitants. On the corner of the main street (through which he so sadly walked, seeing nothing but unbroken and unopposed heathenism) now stand, in a wellenclosed compound, (or enclosure,) a neat Christian church, a commodious school-house, and a small open bungalow for preaching.

Not only Chintadrepettah, but the whole city, is rapidly increasing in population. Rather more than two hundred years ago, (in 1639,) a company of English merchants received the grant of Madras, as a spot of ground