The Most Magnificent Palaces Lay Around In The Midst Of Splendid Gardens, Into One Of Which The Palanquin-Bearers Turned, And Set Me Down Under A Handsome Portico Before The House Of Herr Heilgers, To Whom I Had Brought Letters Of Recommendation.

The young and amiable mistress of the house greeted me as a countrywoman (she was from the north and I from the south of Germany), and received me most cordially.

I was lodged with Indian luxury, having a drawing-room, a bed-room, and a bath-room especially assigned to me.

I happened to arrive in Calcutta at the most unfavourable period possible. Three years of unfruitfulness through almost the whole of Europe had been followed by a commercial crisis, which threatened the town with entire destruction. Every mail from Europe brought intelligence of some failure, in which the richest firms here were involved. No merchant could say, "I am worth so much;" - the next post might inform him that he was a beggar. A feeling of dread and anxiety had seized every family. The sums already lost in England and this place were reckoned at thirty millions of pounds sterling, and yet the crisis was far from being at an end.

Misfortunes of this kind fall particularly hard upon persons who, like the Europeans here, have been accustomed to every kind of comfort and luxury. No one can have any idea of the mode of life in India. Each family has an entire palace, the rent of which amounts to two hundred rupees (20 pounds), or more, a month.

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