Page:Bulandshahr- Or, Sketches of an Indian District- Social, Historical and Architectural.djvu/33

 With a large number of wealthy landed proprietors, mostly Muhammadans, living on their own estate, in the midst of their own tenantry, as many as thirteen of them exercising the powers of Honorary Magistrates and ready to report any suspicious circumstance they may observe; with the whole population singularly well-to-do and largely impregnated with Muhammadan ideas of social propriety; and with whole tribes ordinarily reputed criminal, forsaking their old predatory habits for the more assured profits of honest husbandry, it would be strange indeed, if the district statistics coincided precisely with those of other localities where industry and sobriety are not so conspicuously remunerative.

In addition to the many advantages already enumerated, the district is well provided with communications, having as many as seven Railway Stations, four on the East Indian and three on the Oudh and Rohilkhand line. It is also traversed by the Grand Trunk Road from the Aligarh to the Delhi border, and has a complete net-work of minor thoroughfares radiating in every direction from the town of Bulandshahr, which occupies the exact centre of the whole area. A few years ago, during one of the periodical financial panics, several of the roads were summarily condemned by the head of the Public Works Department, and broken up at considerable expense; but their reconstruction will be one of the first acts of the new Local Committee. The greatest obstacle to freedom of communication has hitherto been the Kálindi, which had a permanent bridge only at Bulandshahr, and no bridge or ferry of any kind whatever between that town and Hápur in the Merath district, a distance of about 30 miles. As the banks are high and sudden floods frequent, it was never safe for a traveller to reckon on the possibility of a passage, and the obstruction to traffic was thus most serious. This has now been removed by the munificence of one of the Honorary Magistrates, Saiyid Mihrbán Ali, who has constructed a substantial bridge of twenty-three arches, near the town of Guláothi, where his residence is, at the large cost of Rs. 30,000.

My letter to the Secretary to Government, in which I first broached the scheme of this Bridge, was dated 7 January 1881. I quote it at length, since the correspondence illustrates in a forcible manner the almost inconceivable insolence and obstructiveness of the Department to which the material progress of the country is mainly entrusted.

It ran as follows: