---

Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 4, p. 308.

308 THE3 INDIAN EMAPIIRE [CHAP. Engineers. This system was first adopted for the Bengal Pre- sidency, and was subsequently introduced into Madras and Bombay with modifications of detail. These arrangements were completed in I854, the sixth year of Lord I)alhousie's Governor- Generalship. Irrigation. Irrigation works, the second of the three classes, had been carried out, under British rule, many years before these occur- rences. Work on the systems known as the Eastern and Western Jumna Canals, which owed their first beginnings to neglected canals constructed by Firoz Tughlak and the Mughal emperors, appears to have been commenced between 1817 and 1822. The Ganges Canal had been commenced in 1842 under Sir Proby Cautley: the Bari Doab Canal also had been com- menced by Colonel Dyas. In Madras the great anicut (dam) across the river Godavari had been designed and constructed by Sir Arthur Cotton and his successors. When the new Public Works Department was formed in the Punjab in I849, and in the United Provinces five years later, an Irrigation branch, under a Director of Canals, was already in existence in both cases; and to this day the Irrigation and Buildings, &c., branches are more distinct in these Provinces than elsewhere. Railways. Railway construction had begun with a contract, in I849, with the East Indian Railway Company, for an experimental line to cost not more than one million sterling. This line was to be so selected as to form, if so desired, a portion of the future trunk line to the United Provinces. In the spring of 1853 the Government of India laid before the Court of Directors a programme of railways for the Indian empire. A system of trunk lines was recommended, connecting the interior of each Presidency with its principal port, and the several Presidencies with each other. The lines proposed were: (i) from Calcutta to Lahore; (2) from Agra or some similar point to Bombay, or alternatively a line from Bombay by the Narbada valley, to meet, at some point, the line from Calcutta to Lahore; (3) from Bombay to Madras; (4) from Madras to the Malabar coast. This general plan was accepted by the Court of Directors, and by the beginning of i856 some progress had been made in constructing most of the lines. Public Thus towards the' end of Lord Dalhousie's Governor- Works Generalship one branch of the present Public Works De- organiza- tion at the partment, that which was then concerned with both civil and end of military Buildings and Roads, had been set on foot throughout Lord Dal- housie's the three Presidencies, and an Irrigation branch was in adminis- existence in the Punjab and the United Provinces; A Railway