through the city in a masonry bed, it divided
into minor streams, which abundantly
supplied the residences of the nobles of the city.
A great stream, flowing through the palace,
supplied fountains, basins, and baths, and
irrigated the trees and flowers of the splendid
gardens. Water-courses still existing along
the line of this Delhi Canal are monuments
of the luxuriant agriculture called into existence
by Shah Jehan. According to a tradition
in Delhi, the returns from the canal
were sufficient for the maintenance of twelve
thousand horsemen. The permanent
establishment for repair and protection consisted
of a large body of workmen, and one thousand
foot and five hundred horse police,
stationed at points three or four miles apart.
Two hundred years later, this canal, in the
course of intestine wars, became filled up.
When the Mogul empire fell under our
dominion, a Mr. Brewer offered to restore it,
if the profits were secured to him by a lease.
His offer was rejected, and a long period
elapsed before any effective steps to restore
irrigation were attempted.

Nothing is more lamentable, in the history
of our eastern empire, than the neglect of
the examples left us by Ackbar and Shah
Jehan. To develop India, the most profitable
step that could be taken would be to
expend money in adapting streams for irrigation,
and, where possible, for navigation,—to
husband every drop of superfluous water in
the rainy season, in order to distribute it
in the dry. In England, we use irrigated
meadows to grow green crops; in the south
of Europe, rice is grown in pale meadows;
but in India, almost every crop, in a series of
years, has need of water, more or less, in the
long uncertain intervals that prevail between
the rains—the seed time and the harvest—
besides the rice or paddy fields, which require,
for several weeks, a constant covering of
water.

There are two ways of obtaining water
for irrigation: the one, practised for many
hundred years, is, to dam up a river, and
then lead canals from either side through
the district to be irrigated. If it be a delta,
the work of each cultivator is comparatively
easy; he has only to level the slight
irregularities of his land, and cut the small channels,
by which he can lead his share of the stream
over every part of his fields. If the level of
the canals or stream should be lower than
his land, then he must make use of some of
the many simple irrigating pumps, wheels,
and scoops, in use in all Eastern climates.
Another mode is, to take advantage of a
valley among the hills, or other slope, in the
way of the fall of monsoon rains, and, by
erecting a wall or bund, catch and store
the flood of rain for use in the dry season.
These two operations are done on large and
small scales, from a few yards to fifty miles
in length; but the principle is always the
same.

The rivers available for irrigation are also
more or less available for navigation, if not
by steamers, by boats, canoes, or rafts.

While the Marquis of Tweedale, whose
name is well known in this country as an
agricultural improver, was Governor of
Madras, he sanctioned, and, still more
extraordinary, induced the home government to
sanction, the expenditure of some three
hundred thousand pounds on irrigation works
on the Godavery river, planned by Colonel
Cotton. These works have since been
executed. The result is an increase of revenue,
from various sources, of three hundred thousand
pounds a-year, besides the prospective
advantage of a thousand miles of navigation
from the cotton districts of Berar to the sea.
The whole system of agriculture over some
hundred square miles has been changed by
these works. Cultivators who only grew
dry grain before, have, within two years,
laid out thousands of acres in rice fields. In
others, the steady supply of water was used
to moisten the earth before ploughing the
land for grain or oil seeds, without waiting
for rain. In a word, it increased the
variety and the produce of the irrigated
district, and effectually protected it from
drought or famine. The operations gave
irrigation to twelve hundred thousand acres.
This acreage was not only protected from
famine, but became a granary for surrounding
districts in eighteen hundred and fifty-three,
when all the surrounding country
suffered from drought. The revenue of the
irrigated district increased by fifty thousand
pounds; and the exports by sea were one
hundred and seventy thousand pounds
against thirty thousand pounds, the average
export before the irrigation works had been
executed. A gentleman who had charge of
the district adjoining that just described
writes: " No one could have seen, as I did,
the wretched condition of the people and the
crops on the Kistnah side of the district, the
difficulties of obtaining even the scantiest
supplies of moderately pure water, and then
have passed to the Godavery side, and
witnessed the contrast—the abundance of pure
water, the splendid crops, the comfort of the
peopl— without being deeply sensible that no
statistics can convey an idea of the priceless
blessing which the waters of the Godavery
—carried by weirs and channels through such
an extent of delta—have conferred upon the
people. In May, I was encamped at
Avenguddah, on the banks of a large branch of
the river Kistnah, reduced to a dry sheet of
sand. The cattle were dying; no signs of
vegetation were apparent; the water foul.
Never did I see so much poverty and misery.
In the month of June I was at Akeed, more
than thirty miles from the nearest point of
the Godavery; but here, fresh water and
forage were abundant. The water of the
Godavery, which had passed through the
head sluice fifty miles up channel, flowed