nares, finds himself, as he approaches the sacred confluence of the Ganges and the Jumna, at Allahabad, entering upon a country differing not only in its natural features, but also in the appearance and character of its inhabitants, from the vast plain of Bengal, which he has left behind. He is now in that division of the British Empire in the East which is known as the North-Western Provinces. These provinces, lying for the most part in the valleys of the Ganges and the Jumna, a great portion of their territory being situated between these two rivers, contain, in their full extent, somewhat more than seventy thousand square miles, and are occupied by a popu lation of not less than 25,000,000 inhabitants. They are at once the most important, most interesting, and best governed part of India. Reaching from the cold summits of the Himmalayas, in which the great rivers have their source, down to the alluvial level of Central India, they exhibit many varieties of soil and climate, of race, language, and customs. The various tribes of Hindus,— Brahmin and Rajput, Jat, Goojur, and Kachi, and the Mahommedan descendants of the old Mahommedan conquerors, though not kept apart from each other by any natural divisions of the country, are yet separated by differences in origin, tradition, and habit, and afford curious contrasts in their dispositions and modes of life. Benares, Muttra, and Hurdwar, three of the most holy and characteristic places of Hindu superstition, frequented by pilgrims from all parts of India, - Delhi and Agra, the two chief and most famous cities that remain to mark the Mussulman invasion and occupation of Hindostan, all lie within the limits of these provinces.

From the days of Tamerlane to those of Nadir Shah, this tract has been the great battle-field of the East. In early times, conqueror after conqueror swept over it, leaving desolation to mark his course, till at length the foreign Mahommedan rule was established, and, for a few short centuries, it became the seat of all the fancied wonders and the real splendors of the courts of the Great Moguls. But with the decline of their power during the last century, the country sank into a state of utter disorganization, and became the scene of perpetual strife. About fifty years ago, it was reached in the

progress of English conquests; the rule of the East India Company was extended over it, and since then it has enjoyed a period of unexampled prosperity and improvement.

It is in this territory, full of the finest memorials of Hindu and Mahommedan supremacy, that the English have been most successful in their experiment of governing the people of India, and there they have commenced and completed works that afford splendid and undeniable proof of their understanding, to use the words of Sir William Jones, " that the principal object of every government should be the happiness of the governed."

In view of the immense difficulties, with which they have had to contend, the highest credit is due to those civil and military officers in the East India Company's service, by whose well-directed efforts the improvement in this part of India has been chiefly effected. Having to contend against the obstacle of distance from the source of authority in England; having to reconcile the interests of the conquerors and the conquered-interests too frequently deemed adverse to each other; having to grope ignorantly, step by step, through the most complicated intricacies, to a knowledge of the characters, customs, and prejudices of those whom they were governing; having to adapt their regulations of government to native East Indian comprehension, and to a form of civilization essentially different from their own; having to overcome the distrust and dread of authority, which was the legacy of former bad governments; and, hardest of all, having the means that might have been employed in the improvement of the country, often drained off from it into the seive of distant war;— notwithstanding all this, these men have laid securely the foundation of a continually increasing prosperity, and have done more for the welfare of the people in the last fifty years than the Mahommedan rulers accomplished in five hundred.

It would be impossible, within the narrow limits of these pages, to give a complete account of the various measures for the public good that have been undertaken, during this period, in the North-Western Provinces. We should like to describe, for it deserves to be known, the revenue system, based upon an admirable land settlement, by which the rights of

every landholder and cultivator have been accurately deter mined, with the most careful regard to ancient prescriptions and rights, while they are secured by an annual registry; and this, too, over a country as large as England and Scotland put together, "held by peasant proprietors, parcelled out into minute divisions, and with an agricultural population of between fourteen and fifteen millions." And we would willingly give an account, in connection with the land revenue system, of the educational scheme of village schools and vernacular instruction that has been adopted within a few years past, and which proposes to engage the self-interest of the people in the attempt to remove their ignorance. But leaving these, and other similar topics, it is our present object to give a description of public works of another kind, interesting from their direct effect upon the prosperity and improvement of the country, namely, the Canals of Irrigation, which are now being extended over these provinces.†

"Water, Sir, is a great thing," said a poor Hindu cultivator, whose bullocks were drawing it from his well; "Water, Sir, is a great thing." How great a thing, indeed, we doubt if any one can fairly estimate, who has not seen the effects of a tropical drought, or, at least, experienced the length of a hot, dry season, extending, as in India, for month after month. In such a climate, a supply of water is of the first necessity in agriculture. Its presence or absence is the difference be

* The inhabitants who possess rights of property in the soil compose a vast majority of the adult population. Their rights being annually recorded, it is, of course, an object of desire to every proprietor to be able to consult the register, to see that no mistake or fraud has been committed. "The means are thus afforded," says the present excellent Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces, Mr. Thomason, in a resolution of the 9th of February, 1850, "for setting before the people the practical bearing of learning on the safety of the rights in land, which they most highly prize." Calcutta Review, No. xxvii. July, 1850, p. 139.

In doing this, we shall follow, for the most part, an article upon the subject which appeared in the Calcutta Review, for July, 1849. It is, as Mr. Kaye has justly called it, in his recent valuable work on the East India Company, "a very mine of information," in regard to these canals. On its first appearance in India, it excited much attention, from the ability with which it was written, and from the novelty, even to most Indian residents, of the facts which it detailed. It has since been reprinted, with some alterations, by its distinguished author, Captain Baird Smith, in an Appendix to his important work on "Italian Irrigation," a book of which it is pleasant to regard the article as, in some degree, the origin.

tween fertility and barrenness-between plenty and starvation. The more ample the supply, the more abundant are the returns to the husbandman, and the better their quality. In a country like the North-West Provinces, where so large a proportion of the inhabitants depend for their subsistence upon the immediate produce of the land, having no stores laid up as provision against bad seasons, and no means with which, at such a time, to purchase food, the failure of water is but another name for famine. From the very earliest times, the need was felt of a more regular and certain supply than that furnished by the rains and the rivers. The first process of agriculture, after the sowing of the seed, was the watering of the earth in which it lay. Very soon, wells and tanks were dug, and dams constructed, with more industry than skill, by which the dangers of drought might be warded off.† But these could be of but very limited operation, and the necessity of works upon a larger scale, and of more general usefulness, must have been early experienced, though the troubles to which the country was exposed, and the want of sufficient scientific knowledge, long prevented their execution.

The first canal for irrigation, upon an extensive scale, of which there are accounts, was constructed about the middle of the 14th century, by order of Feroze Toghlak, one of the most enlightened of the early Mahommedan princes. Fifty years later, a curious passage in that remarkable book, the Institutes of Tamerlane, shows the disposition of the great devastator in a somewhat amiable light, and proves his desire to spread the blessings of artificial irrigation: "And I ordained whoever undertook the cultivation of waste lands, or built an aqueduct, or made a canal, or planted a grove, or restored culture to a deserted district, that in the first year nothing should be taken from him, and that in the second year, whatever the

*

In the Institutes of Menu, we find reference to dams and pools for securing water. Ch. ix. § 279.

Masonry wells are common in every part of India. It is a pleasant thing to hear the husbandmen singing, as they draw the water for their fields. There is a tradition that Tanseyn, the famous old singer of Delhi, used to spend much of his time in listening to these songs of the well, that he might weave the simple airs into his more finished melodies. So beautiful was his singing that the river Jumna is said to have stopped in her course to hear him.

subject voluntarily offered, should be received, and that in the third year, the duties should be collected according to the regulation." But the stream in the canal of Feroze Shah soon ceased to flow; and it was not till more than 200 years afterwards, in the reign of the wisest of the Great Moguls, Akbar, that, as it appears, an order went forth that the channel should be dug out wider and deeper than before, so that the water might flow in it, in a perennial stream, to the cities of Hansi and Hissar, lying in the arid plains to the west of the Jumna. About the time of the landing of the Pilgrims and the settlement of Massachusetts, the magnificence of the court of Delhi reached its height, during the lavish rule of Shah Jehan. The most beautiful remains of Mussulman dominion in India, the great palace of modern Delhi, the Jumma Musjid, outrivalling all other mosques, the Taj Mahal at Agra, all were built by the order of this luxurious and tasteful monarch; and, with characteristic largeness of design, a canal on a far ampler scale than any hitherto attempted, was brought from the line of the old work of Feroze Shah down to the royal city of Delhi. Wonderful traditions remain of the benefit which the villages along its banks realized from its fertilizing waters. Its stream flowed through the splendid city, branching into innumerable channels, watering the gardens and supplying the fountains of the chief men of the state, and flowing through "the great halls and courts and private apartments of the imperial palace," where, in the exquisite white marble inner hall of audience, may be seen, to this day, the polished but now empty channel in which the water ran, cooling the hot air, and hastening along to the thick shade of the adjoining gardens.

During the same reign, another canal was dug on the east of the Jumna; but engineering difficulties, beyond the skill of those days, apparently prevented the attempt to maintain it for more than a single season. The western canal, on the contrary, remained efficient "for about a century and a quarter after its construction in 1626." Gradually, however, with the decline of the Mogul power in the 18th century, all the public works of the country fell into decay; and for nearly half a century before the British conquest, the people had ceased