canal will be used not only for irrigation, but for connecting the Lower Ganges with the Great Ganges Canal. Its great size renders it well adapted as a relief work, as large numbers can be massed upon it, which has already been done; and the railway, at no great distance, will enable food for the labourers to be supplied at different points along the line.
There are other smaller canals (40 to 50 miles in length each) forming parts of the same scheme.
The execution of some of these, it is understood, has been ordered.
The Sone works irrigate South Behar, south of the Ganges. Their value, as part of the grand line of communication up the valley of the Ganges, will be even greater than for irrigation. From Allahabad to Monghyr is 300 miles, and on this part two million tons would be carried per annum; saving, even compared with the river, about ½d. a ton a mile, or £4,000 a mile—£1,200,000 a year in all. This is besides many hundred miles of branch canals. If the works cost four millions this alone would be 30 per cent.
Gunduck.There are two proposed canals on the Gunduck, a tributary of the Ganges on the north, to supply the Chumparun and Tirhoot districts on the one side, and Sarun on the other—through the middle of one district of the famine-stricken country.
A fight was certainly made to start one, at least, of these at once.
Damoodah.The Damoodah Canal project was brought forward in Lord Mayo's time, and a beginning made; but