Page:Bulandshahr- Or, Sketches of an Indian District- Social, Historical and Architectural.djvu/115

 a nuisance ever afterwards. It is entirely forgotten that there is a vast difference between drains and drainage. In a dry climate, like that of Northern India, where it rains on an average only about twenty-five days in the year, there can be no constant excess of moisture to provide against. A covered drain is at all times and in every country the chosen home of typhoid, while a deep open drain is for 340 days, out of the whole 365, a dangerous pitfall or a slovenly dust-bin. Even when the rare and sudden flood does come, it has its own way very much as before, for any ordinary channel must be inadequate to contain it. The proper method is to have broad paved or metalled streets with an almost imperceptible slope from one end to the other, and also from the centre to the sides, so that the water may rapidly run off without the necessity for any drain whatever. Every improvement in the town of Bulandshahr during the last six years has had a beneficial effect on the drainage; but on actual drains nothing has been spent except in closing, or at least raising the level of those which had been constructed by my predecessors, and upon which the whole Municipal income would appear to have been squandered. Certainly, beyond drains and latrines, there were no other visible results of Municipal administration: for the dispensary and school had been built out of special funds, to which the Municipality did not even contribute.

All the new improvements have been designed and successfully carried out by independent local agency, never with the slightest assistance from departmental quarters, but for the most part in the face of much professional opposition. On the other hand, the performances of the trained engineers in Government service make a very insignificant appearance. The local works, which they have executed during the last fifty years, have been simply as follows:—The Jail; the District Law Courts; the Lowe Memorial; the Assistant Surgeon's official quarters; the Church and the Church Chaukidar's Lodge. The last named can only be regarded as a practical joke. The Church itself, which stands at the extreme west end of the station, was completed in 1864 at a cost of Rs. 5.750, on which the contractor, Mr. Michell, now a large landed proprietor in the Merath district, is said to have been a considerable loser. The money was raised by a subscription, which had been headed by Mr. Lowe, the then Collector, a son-in-law of the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir William Muir. He died in July 1862, and is buried in the Chancel. His name is further commemorated by a