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88 would it be a small matter to dam up a river draining nearly 300 sq. miles of country and subject to violent floods, with a wall 125 feet high, to transform it into a placid lake three or four times the area of the Husain Saugar, and capable of containing ten times the quantity of water, to construct a covered conduit twelve miles long, and a pipe system for nearly a million people. There have been big engineering works carried out in India. This in its boldness and width of view is as big as any. It may be confidently asserted that it is by far the biggest thing ever done in Hyderabad. Your Highness will be glad to know that you have in Mr. Dalai an officer eminently capable of bringing this great effort to a successful conclusion, and in this I speak with knowledge, for I have seen and studied and admired the difficult and arduous enterprise of a similar nature that he has already carried out in Mysore.

"It will not be out of place to point out that this work at which we are now assembled is but an instalment. It only half protects Hyderabad from floods, it much reduces their intensity, but it does not confer entire immunity. The river Easi has still to be controlled, an even larger and more costly work,