Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/72

 INTRODUCTION.

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impetus is given to the free exchange of thought by the cheap and efficient organization of the post-office. Perhaps the most effective and judicious method by which the State can promote the wealth of the people is the opening out of easy communications for trade, and this duty has During the native rule there were no outnot been lost sight of thoroughfares, which were reached only river great lets but the one year and ploughdangerous cart-tracks, open and by difficult ed up at the caprice of the men through whose lands they passed the next, where the slow and heavy bullock-carts were delayed on their long journeys by endless detours and the conThe streams stant danger of being upset or broken to pieces. on rudely conby which the country is intersected were crossed structed rafts and boats, and in the rains were often wholly "Within the last twenty years all the principal impassable. rivers, except the Gogra below its junction with the Sarju, have i)een bridged at convenient intervals, and a bridge of boats makes the passage of even that formidable water perfectly easy during eight months in the year. Metalled roads of unsurpassable smoothness and excellence connect most of the principal towns, and the rough cart-tracks, which are the indigenous means of transit, have been entrusted to a special department to be repaired and preserved from encroachment. Lastly, a line of railway has j ust been completed which brings Lucknow, the centre of the province, into easy communication with Shdhjahdnpur, Cawnpore, Benares, and the great timber mart at Bahram ghat.

An

effort has been made to familiarize the people with the principles of self-government as understood by ourselves by the institution of municipalities, where the residents of the chief

centres of trade and population decide on matters connected with the health and internal police of their towns, and the means by local expenses may be met. Dispensaries scattered all over the country bring the most useful drugs of the European pharmacopoeia and the advice of trained native doctors within the reach of the poorest classes. The general principles of sanitation are being constantly inculcated, and an elaborate system of returns of vital statistics endeavours to lay bare all facts important to the health of the province. Prom the near stand-point of a contemporary, and in the very midst of the events, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to form a correct opinion of the ultimate tendency of all these great measures of change, and yet the question is of the most

which the necessary