the Council of Fort St. George sent Mr. DuPre,
Chief Councillor and succeeding Governor, to Haidar Ali's camp, on
the other side of the Marmalong Bridge, to come to terms with the
invader; and within three days a treaty had been made. The treaty,
said Mr. DuPre, writing to a friend, "will do us no honor: yet it was
necessary, and there was no alternative but that or worse."

After this humiliation the building of the Wall was regarded as a
pressing necessity; and within a year the work was practically
finished.

[Illustration: 'THE OLD AND THE NEW'

Corner of the Medical School built into a portion of the Black Town
Wall.]

It was well indeed that the work was done; for a few years afterwards,
on the 10th of August, 1780, Haidar's cavalry raided San Thome and
Triplicane, killing a number of people; and the terror in Black Town
was so great that crowds of the inhabitants took flight. Fortunately,
however, the Governor was able to issue the following notification for
the reassurance of the public:--'A sufficient number of guns have been
mounted on the Black Town wall,' and 'nothing has been omitted that I
can think of for the security of the Black Town.' Haidar was not
sufficiently venturesome to attack the fortified town; but the terror
of the inhabitants was by no means at an end; for a little later came
the disastrous news that a British force sent out to meet the invader
had been cut to pieces at Conjeevaram. Eventually, however, the
Mysoreans were defeated, and the treaty of peace was a triumph for the
Company.

The long delay in the building of the Wall was chiefly due to the fact
that the representatives of the Company, being commercial men,
naturally gave their chief attention to the Company's mercantile
business, and were apt to disregard the immediate necessity of
expensive schemes which the Company's military officers put forward as
strategic requirements. When the Wall was first talked about, after
the recovery of Madras from the French, the Directors in England, who
always kept a tight hand on the Company's purse-strings, declared that
the inhabitants of Black Town ought to be made to pay for the cost of
their own defences, and should be taxed accordingly; and the name of
the 'Wall Tax Road,' which runs alongside the Central Station to the
Salt Cotaurs, is a standing reminder of the Directors' decree, while
the road itself is an indication of the alignment of the western wall.
The people protested indi