unwilling spectator of the punishment of
the collector of a district who was flogged with whips armed with nails.

A few hundreds of Europeans, English, German, and French, were in Hyder's
pay, encamped about the town, and a German captain lent his tent for
public worship. No molestation was offered to any instructions that
Swartz attempted to give, and he was very courteously entreated by the
Prince himself. The conferences with him were generally held in a hall
of marble columns, open to a garden adorned with fruit trees, rows of
cypresses, and fountains. Hyder Ali sat on rich carpets, covering the
floor, and the Padre was placed next to him. He spoke in general terms
of his desire to keep the peace, though the British had violated their
engagements, referring to an attempt that had newly been made to march
troops through his territory without his permission. To Swartz he was
gracious in speech, but the letter he entrusted to him was full of
threatening for this and other acts which he considered aggressive; and
the general impression brought back by the missionary was that a war was
to be expected.

Hyder Ali had presented him with a bag of three hundred rupees for
travelling expenses, which it would have been a great affront to return.
He, however, made it over to the Government at Madras, and when they
would not take it, asked leave to use it as the foundation for a
collection for an English orphan school at Tanjore. This was granted,
and proved a success. Finding that there was an intention of voting a
present to him, he begged instead that a salary might be given to Mr.
Pohle at Trichinopoly; and, in consequence, both were enabled to maintain
catechists and schoolmasters; for of making a home for themselves, these
devoted men never thought. Moreover, Swartz obtained bricks and lime for
the building of his English church within the fort; and he bought and
enlarged a house half a mile from it, for his Malabar Christians to
worship in. His own observations of Hyder Ali's warlike intentions led
also to his purchasing 12,000 bags of rice as a provision against the
scarcity that too surely attends upon Indian warfare.

In the summer of 1780, these apprehensions were realized. Hyder crossed
the Ghauts, and passed down into the Carnatic with 100,000 men, directed
by a staff of French officers, and plundered up to the very gates of
Madras. Everything was in the greatest confusion; the English troops
were disp