settled among these dark millions, seem
concentrated on the best mode of taxing this
conquered empire—shifting and balancing
the burdens under which the peasants totter
through their weary lives, with the one
object of preserving an even account between
income and expenditure. For the consideration
of those public works which form the
living essence of Anglo-Saxon colonisation
and culture, there seems to have been no
time in a century which has elapsed since
Clive made the title-deed of Bengal the prize
of his victories.

Although our Indian empire is within
thirty days' post of England, it is so little
known that it will be best to begin at the
beginning. Italy, with its Alpine barrier, is
on a small scale, not unlike India. On the
northern base of a pyramid-shaped territory,
rise the range of Himalaya mountains, a
barrier of snow-covered mountains, rocky
defiles, and narrow valleys, dividing India
from the tablelands of Thibet and China.
On the extreme west lies one of our later
conquests, the Punjaub—the flat country
of the five rivers—hemmed in by the mountain
barriers known to us by the terrible
names of the Khyber and the Bolan Passes.
On the extreme east are Assam and Pegu,
our latest acquisitions. On the north and
west, a tract of one hundred and fifty miles of
plain intervenes between the base of the
sub-Himalayas and a column of mountains—the
Ghauts—which run parallel to the western
coast, and form a barrier, uninterrupted
except by three huge clefts, down to Cape
Camorin.

From this range of Ghauts the whole
country inclines towards the eastern coast;
at first by a series of steppes, or table-lands,
and then by a gradual incline throughout the
whole length of the peninsula, ending in flat
plains. From the Himalaya range flow, beside
many minor streams, six great rivers, namely,
the Ganges, the Godavery, the Kistnah,
the Cauvery, the Hindus, and the Nerbudda
—the one exception traversing the country
in a single stream, unlike the many-branched
Ganges and Godavery.

When we examine a map, or, still better,
a relief model of India, we see a country in
which nature has provided every resource
for the support of a dense population and
the growth of enormous exports. Under an
Indian sun, water alone has the fertilising
virtues of the most powerful manures in
Europe. Great rivers, with their multitude
of branches and affluents, and thousands of
minor streams, fed by the Monsoon rains and
the melting of Himalayan snows, rush first
through the narrow valleys of descending
table-lands, and then flow gently along the
flat plains and delta islands of richest
fertility at the sea's mouth—thus affording
extraordinary facilities for storing in the
high grounds in seasons of flood, and
distributing, through canals and rivers, channels
raised by weirs to a convenient height for
navigation and irrigation in times of drought.

More than five hundred years ago the
then rulers of India vigorously availed
themselves of the irrigating powers of the Indian
rivers, and employed a system of cultivation
brought, perhaps, from Egypt, which
travelled on with the Moors to Spain and Italy,
where it still survives, and in Italy flourishes.
But the minor streams—so valuable when
properly used in a tropical climate—if the
art of the road-maker and the bridge-builder
are not brought into operation, form a
terrible impediment to internal commerce. Thus
it comes to pass that not only in Central
India, but within comparatively short
distances of the coast and of river ports, great
fertile tracts are cut off from all but the
most expensive means of transit; and large
populations, for want of markets for the
produce of their labour, drag on a miserable
existence, with no other knowledge of European
rule than the punctual demands of the
tax-gatherer.

Easy means of communication by land and
water are all the essential elements of civilisation.
In India, save a few slow trifling efforts,
which barely touch the course of communication,
this great work is all to be done.
England, which contains an area of about fifty-
six thousand square miles and twenty-six
million inhabitants, with a sea-coast not
far from its most central city, has of highways
thirty thousand miles; canals and
navigable rivers about three thousand miles;
railroads between five and six thousand
miles. The United States, besides its many
rivers and a vast canal system, has already
upwards of ten thousand miles of railroad.
But India, with an area of one million two
hundred thousand square miles and a population
of one hundred and sixty millions—of
which an important part is distributed with a
density equal to the best agricultural
districts of Europe—has less than eighteen
thousand miles of communication beyond the
unmade tracks and footpaths; that is to say,
coastwise, on a dangerous, surf-beaten coast,
from the mouth of the Hindus to the Ganges,
three thousand five hundred miles; river
navigation, two thousand miles; complete
roads, two thousand miles; imperfect roads,
about ten thousand miles. Two railroads,
one from Bombay, the other from Calcutta,
equal in construction to those of Europe, are
now open to the extent of about two
hundred miles, creeping slowly on, further
extension of one thousand miles is promised
by the year eighteen hundred and sixty.
Yet fifty thousand miles would barely place
our Eastern Empire on an equality with the
French in roads.

But, when we speak of two thousand miles
of complete and ten thousand miles of
incomplete roads, our readers must not think
of the works of Telford and Macadam, or the
French Roman-like military roads of solid