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Rh was rebuilt next year, but was eventually converted into sluices; and the present head-lock was built in 1891. The original Vijésvaram head-sluices fell in 1853; were rebuilt in 1854; and are still in use. The central delta head-sluices fell in 1878 in a high flood, and great difficulty was experienced in preventing damage to the canal below. The head-lock beside them became so shaky that in 1889-90 it was replaced by a new one. Of the eastern delta works, the head-lock toppled over in 1886, when there was 14½ feet of water on the anicut. It carried the lock gates with it and left a gap into the canal fifteen feet wide, through which the water poured. The river continued to rise, and in two days reached the then unprecedented height of 17 feet above the anicut, so that the breach was only stopped with great difficulty. A new lock in a rather better position was built next year and opened on Jubilee day.

A gradually increasing shoal which has been forming on the left side of the Gódávari river above the Dowlaishweram branch of the anicut has been for some time past a source of anxiety and of inconvenience to navigation. The old Dowlaishweram under-sluices not being sufficiently powerful to arrest the progress of this shoal towards the head-sluice, it was considered necessary to build more powerful substitutes for them. An estimate was sanctioned in 1903 and the work is now in progress. The new under-sluices are to consist of ten vents 20 feet wide and 10 feet high, regulated by iron lift shutters and with their sill four feet below that of the head-sluice. The shutters are to be in two tiers — the upper measuring 20 feet by 6 feet and the lower 20 feet by 4 feet —are to be constructed of half inch plates stiffened with rolled steel beams I2 feet by 6 feet, and are to be worked by chain gearing arrangements. Simultaneously with the construction of the head-works, arrangements were made for carrying to the various parts of the delta the water they rendered available. Even before the building of the anicut, certain portions of the delta had been irrigated. Sir Henry Montgomery's report of 1846 already mentioned deplored the neglect with which the then existing channels had been treated, and Sir Arthur Cotton described them as partial works of small extent not kept in an effective state. They were merely inundation channels, the heads of which were 12 or 15 feet above the deep bed of the river, and they received a supply only during floods, or for about 50 days in the year. Some of them lay on the western side of the river in the present Kistna district; the central delta contained none worth mention : but on the eastern side of the river four