The notorious "Black Hole," in which the Rajah Suraja Dowla cast 150
of the principal prisoners when he obtained possession of Calcutta
in 1756, is at present changed into a warehouse. At the entrance
stands an obelisk fifty feet high, and on it are inscribed the names
of his victims.
The Botanical Garden lies five miles distant from the town. It was
founded in the year 1743, but is more like a natural park than a
garden, as it is by no means so remarkable for its collection of
flowers and plants as for the number of trees and shrubs, which are
distributed here and there with studied negligence in the midst of
large grass-plots. A neat little monument, with a marble bust, is
erected to the memory of the founder. The most remarkable objects
are two banana-trees. These trees belong to the fig-tree species,
and sometimes attain a height of forty feet. The fruit is very
small, round, and of a dark-red; it yields oil when burnt. When the
trunk has reached an elevation of about fifteen feet, a number of
small branches shoot out horizontally in all directions, and from
these quantity of threadlike roots descend perpendicularly to the
ground, in which they soon firmly fix themselves.
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