Later Life
He succeeded William Roxburgh to become the Superintendent of the Calcutta botanical garden in 1814, but had to return to Britain in 1815 due to his ill health. In an interesting incident the notes that he took of Hope's botany lectures in 1780 was lent to his shipmate Alexander Boswell during a voyage in 1785. Boswell, lost the notes in Satyamangalam in Mysore and the notes went into the hands of Tippu Sultan who had them rebound. In 1800 they were found in Tippu's library by a major who returned it to Buchanan.
Buchanan left India in 1815, and in the same year inherited his mother's estate and in consequence took her surname of Hamilton, referring to himself as "Francis Hamilton, formerly Buchanan" or simply "Francis Hamilton". However he is variously referred to by others as "Buchanan-Hamilton", "Francis Hamilton Buchanan" or "Francis Buchanan Hamilton".
Read more about this topic: Francis Buchanan-Hamilton
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“They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others. Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life is cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady;
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need—
You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)