Page:The Earl of Mayo.djvu/185

Rh Lord Mayo, assisted by General Strachey, resolved to supplement the expensive system of guaranteed lines by a network of State railways. Instead of guaranteeing five per cent, interest, the Government has raised the capital for these State railways at three to four per cent. Instead of an initial cost of £17,000 per mile for broad-gauge lines, it determined to construct narrow-gauge lines, at about £6000 per mile. For the old costly double management, the new system substituted a single firm control. Into the vexed question of the break of gauge it is not needful for me here to enter. It must suffice to say that Lord Mayo perfectly realised its disadvantages. His plan was to construct a system of narrow-gauge railways on a sufficient scale to allow of long lengths of haulage without break of gauge. Later experience has affirmed the practical convenience of the broader gauge. But, excepting in a few isolated spots, the system of State railways dates from Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty; and it is the system which, under various modern developments, is now absorbing within itself the whole railway system of India.

Lord Mayo's other great engine of internal development in the battle against famine was irrigation. A bare list of the works which he inaugurated, advanced, or caiTied out, would weary the reader. The Ganges Canal was extended, and, after seventeen years of deficit, took its place as a work no longer burdensome to the State. A new irrigation system, starting from the Ganges opposite Aligarh, and designed to water