View of Calcutta from the Glacis of Fort William

This is plate 15 from James Baillie Fraser's 'Views of Calcutta and its Environs'. Fraser (1783-1856) arrived in Calcutta in 1814 and in six years produced these animated sketches of the busy city, published later as a collection of 24 superbly aquatinted plates.

New arrivals to the city commented on their first sight of the Fort with its glacis, or gently sloping bank. Mrs Eliza Fay wrote in 1780: "Our fort is also so well kept and everything in such excellent order ... all the slopes, banks and ramparts, are covered with the richest verdure, which completes the enchantment of the scene."