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Forty Years of Official and Unofficial Life in an Oriental Crown Colony
Forty Years of Official and Unofficial Life in an Oriental Crown Colony Author:William Digby Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. 1821—1838. FROM INFANCY TO YOUNG MANHOOD. About the middle of the eighteenth century a Welshman named Morgan, of an adventurous turn of mind, ... more »tired of the dullness and seclusion of the Cambrian principality, and attracted possibly by reports of the famed pagoda tree of the East, sailed for Hindustan. Whether, like most Englishmen of that and succeeding generations to the present, he went Eastward with the intention of returning to his native land is not known, but one thing is certain, he never did return. He accepted office under the Madras Government, married in India, and was eventually laid to rest in its soil. His children, meanwhile, had grown up around him, and were filling posts of usefulness in Southern India, some being in office in Travancore. One of them, Richard Morgan, owing to the presence of the Dutch at Tuticorin and other ports in the south, had acquired a knowledge of the Dutch language as well as a familiar acquaintance with the English tongue. Consequently, when, in 1796, the British had conquered the Dutch in Ceylon and had taken possession of the island, and settled Government existed and departments were organised, the Indian presidencies had to be indented on for officials to carry on the duties called into existence by the changed rule. Richard Morgan found his opportunity, passed over the narrow Straits of Manaar, and took office under the honorable FrederickTHE FREEING OF THE SLA VES. 67 North, the first English governor of the island. A large number of Dutch burghers, bound by ties of kindred or owning property, had remained in Ceylon after the capitulation. They knew but one European language, and that was Dutch. Obviously a man who could speak both tongues was an acquisition to the colony, and Richard Morgan at once stepped i...« less