Page:Arthur Cotton - The Madras Famine - 1898.djvu/25

 from the Madras Irrigation Companies Works, to show what ought to have been going on in every part of the famishing country.

June last. “It was laughable to visit the large and now opulent Villages under the Canal in order to learn whether they wanted any more Water. Pointing to the wretched driblets sent down the Channels to open them, they could not find words to express their disgust. See: is this enough for one single field? and so forth. So very different from this time last year. In all cases they promised with every possible insistence, that if more were given they would waste none, and that if Water were given at Night they would turn out and utilize it. The Canal will at last be fairly tested. If all go well there will be six feet in it during the next full moon, seven during that in August, and eight in September. In that state it is to be hoped, the October Monsoon will fall into it.”

And again under date July 17th. “All the attention of the Staff during this month will be occupied in distributing the large body of Water now coming down the Canal. Just now every sluice is Irrigating day and night in the fourth and fifth sections; but Mr. Dumphy shows symptoms of being overdone near Caddapah” (the extreme end of the Canal, 190 miles from the Head) “and I am rapidly trebling the quantity of Water taken up at Jootoor by the seventh section in order to relieve him. Hitherto I have not heard of a single drop being wasted into the Pennair. The Weather at Kurnool up to the latest date is drier than ever, and here the new moon has passed without any signs of Rain.”

Who can bear to hear these things and think that this, instead of being confined to a Tract 190 miles in length, ought to have been the case throughout the Peninsula, over the whole Country occupied by thirty millions of People; think of the poverty, misery and death spread over this vast region, when there might have been everywhere the same plenty, opulence, and