Page:On the Coromandel Coast.djvu/137

 Blacktown suffered more from these scoundrels than from the guns of the siege.

On Lally's departure some of the inhabitants ventured back, and the rebuilding was continued. From 1760 progress was rapid. Although the streets were narrow and the native houses insignificant, it was a much cleaner and handsomer city than the old one. In 1769 a fortified wall was built round the town on the west and north sides, remains of which may still be seen. The man who built it was Benfield, whose name has been immortalised by Burke in one of his great speeches. The orator's words were not in praise, but in scathing condemnation of Benfield, who had shaken the pagoda tree too vigorously over the contract.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century the arm of the Cooum that washed the wall on the west was filled in, and the Broadway was made. The work was carried out by Stephen Popham, who came to Madras as solicitor of the Company. He belonged to the same family as the naval commander, Sir Home Popham, who held a command in India (1800-3). Stephen Popham brought his wife with him, a daughter of Sir William Thomas, and selected Blacktown as his home. He had given up a seat in the Irish Parliament to take the appointment, and he came out full of commercial enterprise and enthusiasm. He had visions of making Blacktown a princely mercantile suburb, where the merchants would live over their offices, as was the custom in London. It was a grand scheme, but there was an important factor in it with which Popham had not reckoned. This was the impossibility for the European to reside with safety among the natives. Sooner or later comes the epidemic, bred of their insanitary habits, and the Englishman succumbs.

Popham had the courage of his convictions, and endeavoured to live up to them. The result was disas-