At times came friendly support; at others, opposition from the authorities--the committee at home were sometimes ignorantly meddlesome, sometimes sordid in their fits of economy; insufficiently tested fellow-labourers came out and failed; promising converts fell away; the climate was one steady unrelaxing foe, which took victims out of every family: but all these things were as the dust of the highway, trials common to man, and only incident to the very position that had been so wondrously achieved, since the day when the poor Baptist cobbler was so peremptorily silenced for but venturing to hint at the duty of converting the heathen.
Lord Hastings' government was far more friendly than any previous one, and the few notable events that befell the community are quickly numbered.

In 1821, they were visited by Swartz's pupil, Serfojee, who was staying with the Governor-General, Lord Hastings, on his way to Benares, whither, strange and sad to say, he was on pilgrimage, though all the time showing full intellectual understanding of, and warm external affection for, the Christian faith.

He talked English easily, and showed much interest in all that was going on, but a heathen he still remained.
This visit only preceded by a few weeks the death of Mrs.Carey, after thirteen years' marriage, the happiest of Dr.Carey's life; but in another year he married a widow of forty-five, who was ready to nurse his now declining years.

That year 1822 was a year of much sorrow; the cholera, said to have first appeared in 1817, became very virulent.

The Hindoos viewed it as a visitation from the goddess of destruction, and held services to propitiate it, and when that had passed away, a more than usually fatal form of fever set in.