Page:Provincial geographies of India (Volume 3).djvu/56

 "a mussoollee being overturned, although it was very smooth water, and no surf, and one EngHshman being drowned, a Dutchman being with difficulty recovered, the boatmen were seized and put in prison, one escaping."

The screw-pile pier at Madras was completed in 1862. The stone commemorating the commencement of the harbour was laid by the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII) in 1875. The harbour, when completed, con- sisted of two parallel masonry breakwaters, each 500 yards distant from the pier, rurming out at right angles to the 'shore for 1200 yards into 7| fathoms of water, and bending towards each other, so as to leave an opening 500 feet wide in the centre of the east side for the ingress and egress of ships. Quite recently, a new north-east entrance has been made, and was first used, in the presence of the Viceroy, in 1909. The old east entrance, which was rapidly shallowing owing to silting of sand, has since been permanently closed.

Proposals have long been under consideration for the construction of a harbour at Vizagapatam, where the tidal backwater is sheltered on the south by the headland of Dolphin's Nose and the hills behind it, and on the other side by distant hills. The conclusion arrived at by an expert was that a groin from the end of Dolphin's Nose would stop the formation of the sand-bar, produced by the waves acting on the sand from the south, which stretches across the entrance to the backwater. At Vizagapatam, a Muhammadan saint is buried on the top of the hill over- looking the backwater. He is considered to have great power over the waters of the Bay of Bengal, and silver dhonis (native vessels) are offered at his shrine by Hindu shipowners after a successful voyage.

Proposals have also been under consideration to cut a ship-canal through Pamban island, to obviate the necessity of large steamers, which are making for ports along the east coast, going out of their way round Ceylon. A channel.