increasing thousands employed on relief works, and of heroic efforts to arrest the tide of impending starvation, till such time as nature shall again furnish the seasonable floods on which the life of the people depends.

Nobly have England and her colonies come forward to give all the help that money and affection can afford; and not less nobly have others joined in the work,kindred States under native Indian rule, and countries far less bound to India than ourselves. The spectacle which India presents today is in truth unique in history, and affords striking evidence, if any were needed, of England's capacity for the great charge she has assumed as an Eastern Power, and not less perhaps of the unnoticed but commanding influence gained over mankind by Christian sentiment. No more eloquent proof could be found of the progress of the past hundred years, alike in Indian administration and in popular feeling, than in the contrast presented by the records of the present great famine with the story told in Sir W. Hunter's 'Annals of Rural Bengal' of that which in 1770 turned Bengal into a howling wilderness.

But when all has been done, and when the threatened lives of helpless thousands have been rescued, we remain still confronted by the uneasy consciousness that the root of the evil is untouched. Like some irresistible tidal wave, Famine in India recedes for a time, only to gather strength in the interval, returning in a few years with overwhelming volume, to find us still unprepared, and driven in the last resort to heroic remedies. Yet surely here is matter for amazement, at least to the unlearned. Shall we, who stand in the forefront of scientific research, who

can bridge Forth and Tay and Menai, who make light of mountain railway or submarine telegraph, and, above all, who pose as the first of oriental Powers, sit down helpless in presence of natural phenomena so familiar as those on which depends the periodical return of famine to a tropical country? Is it possible that there are no means by which we may render India once and for all independent of such well-understood conditions of Eastern life? With money poured out like water, is it the cost we shrink from? Have we sunk so low that any sordid thought of private interest stops the way? or have we not trust enough in our children of genius? In vain we search report and speech and lecture and narrative, official and unofficial, past and present, of those most interested in and best acquainted with the country, for any really satisfactory answer to such questions as these. In all alike it seems to be taken for granted, as a foregone conclusion, that there can be no thought of ridding the country for ever of the periodical visits of this tremendous calamity, and that all that the resources of man can hope to achieve is to battle successfully with the enemy when he is at the gates. But the note of a more hopeful strain is in the air, and we make bold to say that in this most opportunely published record of a great work actually accomplished is to be found an answer at once convincing and full of encouragement—an object-lesson of incalculable value in the treatment of Indian famine, writ so large that he who runs may read.

It needs exceptional courage, we are well aware, to essay an excursion into the records of a public office, and to face the chilly

reception to be met with, alike from liveried porter, from gentlemanly clerk, and from distinguished secretary; but there are times when such an ordeal may be faced, and when we may be rewarded by something even of greater interest than the last Society novel.

If, attracted by the photographs and maps in which this volume is rich, the visitor is enticed to dip into the narrative they illustrate, we can promise him that he will have his reward. It is a chapter of Indian history familiar enough to those on the spot too familiar, strange to say, to some of our highest authorities-and it is one which needs only to be more widely known so to react on public opinion that its lessons shall not be lost. For we learn here how within the last fifty years a great district covering 3000 square miles, which fifty years ago was in so deplorable a condition as to compel the active intervention of the authoritiesdecimated by famine, and with population and revenue decreasing year by year-has been permanently converted into a rich and prosperous province, with revenue and population steadily increasing, and which, when famine visits the land, serves as a granary for starving districts on every side.

Of the twelve short chapters into which the story is condensed the two first contain a brief but clear and interesting sketch of the geography of the Godavery delta, and of the original plans for the utilisation of the waters of the great river for the twofold purpose of irrigation and navigation. In the succeeding chapters, from the third to the ninth, we have the detailed history of the works carried out in the delta, and a deeply interesting history it is, -notwithstanding its necessarily technical character, with its ex

VOL. CLXI.-NO. DCCCCLXXX.

citing incidents of varying success and failure, its full extracts from official correspondence, lifting the curtain upon bygone scenes of hot official warfare, of heroic struggles with disappointment and disaster,

battles with overmastering obstacles in storm and flood, in official mistrust and opposition, in sickness and exhaustion of physical strength. In the tenth and eleventh chapters are recorded the means by which the waters, finally bridled by human genius, have been compelled to serve for ever the double duty of irrigation and navigation, to the immense advantage of the country. Finally, in the twelfth chapter are summarised, with a brevity more eloquent than pages of comment, the net results of the works as affecting finance, revenue, population, cultivation, and communications. The theme is illustrated not only by statistical tables showing at a glance the results of the system at work, but by a series of clearly drawn maps and plans and of admirable photographs, enabling the general reader to realise vividly the nature both of the country itself and of the gigantic work whose history is here recorded.

Enthusiasm, it is well known, begets enthusiasm, and we prophesy with confidence that no reader-however little acquainted with India or with the mysteries of engineering science-will lay down this book without having caught something of the infection of its hero's spirit, and sharing his earnest, almost pathetic, desire that its lessons should be applied throughout the length and breadth. of India. It was in the year 1843 that the lamentable condition of the Godavery district, with its "decreasing population and dwindling revenue," "forced the Government into action." The "sad

3 M

increasing thousands employed on relief works, and of heroic efforts to arrest the tide of impending starvation, till such time as nature shall again furnish the seasonable floods on which the life of the people depends.

Nobly have England and her colonies come forward to give all the help that money and affection can afford; and not less nobly have others joined in the work,— kindred States under native Indian rule, and countries far less bound to India than ourselves. The spectacle which India presents today is in truth unique in history, and affords striking evidence, if any were needed, of England's capacity for the great charge she has assumed as an Eastern Power, and not less perhaps of the unnoticed but commanding influence gained over mankind by Christian sentiment. No more eloquent proof could be found of the progress of the past hundred years, alike in Indian administration and in popular feeling, than in the contrast presented by the records of the present great famine with the story told in Sir W. Hunter's 'Annals of Rural Bengal' of that which in 1770 turned Bengal into a howling wilderness.

But when all has been done, and when the threatened lives of helpless thousands have been rescued, we remain still confronted by the uneasy consciousness that the root of the evil is untouched. Like some irresistible tidal wave, Famine in India recedes for a time, only to gather strength in the interval, returning in a few years with overwhelming volume, to find us still unprepared, and driven in the last resort to heroic remedies. Yet surely here is matter for amazement, at least to the unlearned. Shall we, who stand in the forefront of scientific research, who

can bridge Forth and Tay and Menai, who make light of mountain railway or submarine telegraph, and, above all, who pose as the first of oriental Powers, sit down helpless in presence of natural phenomena so familiar as those on which depends the periodical return of famine to a tropical country? Is it possible that there are no means by which we may render India once and for all independent of such well-understood conditions of Eastern life? With

money poured out like water, is it the cost we shrink from? Have we sunk so low that any sordid thought of private interest stops the way? or have we not trust enough in our children of genius? In vain we search report and speech and lecture and narrative, official and unofficial, past and present, of those most interested in and best acquainted with the country, for any really satisfactory answer to such questions as these. In all alike it seems to be taken for granted, as a foregone conclusion, that there can be no thought of ridding the country for ever of the periodical visits of this tremendous calamity, and that all that the resources of man can hope to achieve is to battle successfully with the enemy when he is at the gates. But the note of a more hopeful strain is in the air, and we make bold to say that in this most opportunely published record of a great work actually accomplished is to be found an answer at once convincing and full of encouragement-an object-lesson of incalculable value in the treatment of Indian famine, writ so large that he who runs may read.

It needs exceptional courage, we are well aware, to essay an excursion into the records of a public office, and to face the chilly

reception to be met with, alike from liveried porter, from gentlemanly clerk, and from distinguished secretary; but there are times when such an ordeal may be faced, and when we may be rewarded by something even of greater interest than the last Society novel.

If, attracted by the photographs and maps in which this volume is rich, the visitor is enticed to dip into the narrative they illustrate, we can promise him that he will have his reward. It is a chapter of Indian history familiar enough to those on the spot too familiar, strange to say, to some of our highest authorities-and it is one which needs only to be more widely known so to react on public opinion that its lessons shall not be lost. For we learn here how within the last fifty years a great district covering 3000 square miles, which fifty years ago was in so deplorable a condition as to compel the active intervention of the authoritiesdecimated by famine, and with population and revenue decreasing year by year has been permanently converted into a rich and prosperous province, with revenue and population steadily increasing, and which, when famine visits the land, serves as a granary for starving districts on every side. Of the twelve short chapters into which the story is condensed the two first contain a brief but clear and interesting sketch of the geography of the Godavery delta, and of the original plans for the utilisation of the waters of the great river for the twofold purpose of irrigation and navigation. In the succeeding chapters, from the third to the ninth, we have the detailed history of the works carried out in the delta, and a deeply interesting history it is, -notwithstanding its necessarily technical character,-with its exVOL. CLXI.—NO. DCCCCLXXX.

citing incidents of varying success and failure, its full extracts from official correspondence, lifting the curtain upon bygone scenes of hot official warfare, of heroic struggles with disappointment and disaster, of battles with overmastering obstacles in storm and flood, in official mistrust and opposition, in sickness and exhaustion of physical strength. In the tenth and eleventh chapters are recorded the means by which the waters, finally bridled by human genius, have been compelled to serve for ever the double duty of irrigation and navigation, to the immense advantage of the country. Finally, in the twelfth chapter are summarised, with a brevity more eloquent than pages of comment, the net results of the works as affecting finance, revenue, population, cultivation, and communications. The theme is illustrated not only by statistical tables showing at a glance the results of the system at work, but by a series of clearly drawn maps and plans and of admirable photographs, enabling the general reader to realise vividly the nature both of the country itself and of the gigantic work whose history is here recorded.

Enthusiasm, it is well known, begets enthusiasm, and we prophesy with confidence that no reader-however little acquainted with India or with the mysteries of engineering science-will lay down this book without having caught something of the infection. of its hero's spirit, and sharing his earnest, almost pathetic, desire that its lessons should be applied throughout the length and breadth of India. It was in the year 1843 that the lamentable condition of the Godavery district, with its "decreasing population and dwindling revenue," "forced the Government into action." The "sad

3 M

"The abolition of the East India Company's factories and the competition of Manchester and other European looms had deprived it of nearly all its cloth trade; . . . an unsuitable form of land-tenure, badly administered, pressed heavily on its cultivators; its few irrigation works were neglected; and it frequently suffered from droughts which withered the crops, or from floods which drowned them for the noble river which runs through the district, and now enriches it, then carried nearly the whole of its treasure of waters uselessly to the sea, or poured them in destructive floods over the most fertile parts of its delta."

By a happy coincidence the government of the Presidency was at this time in the hands of a statesman of exceptional capacity; and at the same time, among the subordinates of the Public Works Department a young officer of the corps of Madras Engineers had just brought himself into prominent notice by his successful completion of a work of great difficulty and importance in the southern district of Tanjore, where the conditions were remarkably similar to those of the Godavery delta.

Sir Henry Montgomery, "one of the ablest of its servants," was deputed by the Madras Government to inquire into the causes of the decline of the Godavery district, and to advise as to remedial measures. He had himself been Collector of the Tanjore district, and his experience of the remarkable success which had been there achieved by bringing under efficient control the waters of the Cauvery river, led him to the opinion that "much could be done with the Godavery" in a similar

the officer by whom the Tanjore works had been carried out, Captain Cotton of the Madras Engineers (now General Sir Arthur Cotton, K.C.S.I.), should be deputed to the Godavery district to report on the subject. The hero of our romance now appears on the scene. In August 1844 Captain Cotton submitted his first report, from which dates the initiation of the work which has turned that great delta from a desert into a garden, by the simple, if arduous, process of directing and utilising the forces abundantly supplied by nature in the great river-system by which the district is traversed.

From the outset the story is not wanting in the elements of romance. One of the twelve holy rivers of India, the Godavery, in its uncontrolled state, is described by Sir Henry Montgomery as "a fearful stream, carrying before it all improvements in its course."

Rising 900 miles away, where "its first trickle issues through the mouth of a sacred idol," it is endowed with all the sanctity afforded by the shrines of the faithful dotted along its course, and with all the wild beauty of a passage through mountain defiles, till it expands at last into an ocean of sandy levels, and melts imperceptibly into the sea. For centuries this giant among the rivers of India had brought down only poverty and destruction instead of prosperity to the unfortunate people living within its influence,-alternately withholding the water on which depended the very necessaries of life, and overwhelming life and property in one widespread ruin. Ravaged by great rivers " is the expression