Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/209

Rh millions sterling in 1856. He not only gave roads, canals, court-houses, jails, treasuries and the whole fabric of civilised administration to the Punjab: no province escaped his attention, and the routes throughout all India, with their strongly constructed bridges and permanent metalled-ways, date their improvement from him. Among Lord Dalhousie's irrigation works, I have already described the great Bári Duáb Canal in the North. Time would fail me to merely enumerate all his beneficent enter- prises. The operations on the Godavari River would alone form a magnificent memorial of his rule.

In order to carry out these and other of his great Public Works, Lord Dalhousie not only created a new Department of Government, but he also organised a new branch of the Government Service. He realized that the operations of civil engineering are best conducted by civil engineers. He, accordingly, laid the foundation of that noble service of highly-trained engineers brought out from England, to whom India is so largely indebted for the material frame-work of its modern development. At the same time he endeavoured by establishing and encouraging engineering schools in each of the three Presidencies, to rear up an indigenous branch of the profession within India itself.