Hooghly River, Calcutta. 

Claudius Buchanan told his cousin that ‘My health declined. I feared I would suffer my wife’s fate before completing the work for which God had sent me to Earth. So I began taking walks and carriage drives, usually beside the Hooghly River. If in a carriage, I would stop to explore the river bank, or to follow a path into the forest. The flowers revived my interest in botany.’ This is a quote from The Claudians: gardens, landscapes, reason and faith: John Claudius Loudon and Claudius Buchanan, Tom Turner (Kindle, 2024).

More about Calcutta and the Hooghly River

The town and suburbs extend along the east side of the river above six miles, but the breadth varies at different places. The esplanade, between the town and Fort William, leaves a grand opening, along the edge of which is placed the new government-house erected by Marquis Wellesley; and continued on in a line with this edifice, is a range of magnificent houses, ornamented with spacious verandahs. Chowringhee, formerly a collection of native huts, is now an entire village of palaces, and extends for a considerable distance into the country. The architecture of the houses is Grecian. The principal square extends about five hundred yards each way, and contains in the centre an ample tank, surrounded by a handsome wall and railing, and having a gradation of steps to the bottom, which is sixty feet from the top of its banks. A range of indifferent looking houses, known by the name of the Writer's Buildings, occupies one side of the square; and near to it, on the site of the old fort, taken by Seraja ul Dowlah, in 1757, is a custom house, with several other handsome buildings. The black-hole is now part of a warehouse, and filled with merchandise. A monument is erected facing the gate, to commemorate the unfortunate persons who there perished; but it has been struck by lightning, and is itself fast going to decay. Part of the inspiration for the landscape design and planning of the Garden Reach came from Kedleston Hall.