A History of the Mahrattas v1.c5.s1.1

v1.c5.s1.1

JAMES GRANT, known later as James Cuninghame Grant Duff, was the eldest son of John Grant, of Kincardine O’Neil, and his wife Margaret Miln Duff, heiress of the Duffs of Eden, Banffshire, and was born in the town of Banff on July 8, 1789. After his father’s death in 1799, his mother moved to Aberdeen, and there, at the Marischal College, Grant received his education. He was designed for the East India Company’s civil service; but impatient at the prospect of delay in obtaining an appointment, he accepted an infantry cadetship on the Bombay establishment in 1805, and arrived in India early in 1806. On his way to India he was wrecked off Cape St. Roque in Brazil, and had the misfortune to lose everything he possessed, including his family papers. He was present at the taking of the Cape of Good Hope by the expedition under Baird in 1806, where his patriotism was stirred by seeing three Highland regiments leap to their feet and advance to the strains of the ‘Rothiemurchus rant.’ On this occasion he had another hairbreadth escape from drowning, by the capsizing of a boat-load of soldiers, and only saved himself by the skill in swimming which he had acquired in his early days at Banff.¹