Page:The Earl of Mayo.djvu/180

172 hill tracts. The only trip which was proposed to him for pleasure merely, he at once rejected. It was a matter of daily occurrence, that, rising at five o'clock, spending the whole day in travelling, receiving officials or Native Chiefs, and inspecting public works, Lord Mayo sat up half the night transacting business with his Foreign, or Private, or Military Secretary.

In these tours he saw much to praise, but also much to amend. The great Department of Public Works had during the previous twelve years rushed to the front of the spending departments in India. In its rapid development, it had to draw its officers from the Staff-Corps, or wheresoever they could be obtained, sometimes with little regard to their previous training for their new duties. Blunders and extravagance had been the result — a result which had been the despair of Lord Mayo's predecessors, and had given rise to grave scandals in the Public Press.

Lord Mayo, alike on his tours and in his Cabinet, set himself to remedy this state of things. 'There is scarcely a fault,' runs one of his Minutes on a certain undertaking, 'which could have been committed in the construction of a great work, which has not been committed here. Estimates a hundred per cent. wrong — design faulty — foundations commenced without the necessary examination of substratum — no inquiry into the excess of cost over estimates during progress.' In another case: 'I have read with great sorrow this deplorable history of negligence, incapacity, and corruption; negligence in the conduct of