The Reviews Reviewed. 



609 



THE WORLDS WORK. 



THii U'or/cfs JVcrk for December is entirely an 

 Indian number. The editor does good service to 

 our great Kastern dependency by directing the atten- 

 tion aroused by the splendours of the Dellii Durbar 

 to a great many other aspects of Indian life. He 

 begins by insisting that it is the duty of the British 

 Raj to maintain its administration of India, and to 

 turn its efforts against sedition as against famine, 

 plague, and mutiny in the past. 



l.E.ADERS OF LIFE IN INDIA. 



Mr. Humphrey Edmonston gives a short account 

 of the si.\ Viceroys who have ruled in modern India 

 — Lords Ripon, Dufferin, Lansdowne, Elgin, Cur/on, 

 Minto. Mr. Saint Nihal Singh gives an interesting 

 account of some progressive Maharajas, the rulers 

 of Baroda, Gwalior, Hyderabad, Patiala, Xabha, 

 Mysore, Travancore, Gondal. It is a striking fact that 

 many of these rulers have introduced free education, 

 sometimes with compulsion added, while British 

 India has not yet reached that level. " Indicus " 

 sketches some commoners who count in the Viceroy's 

 councils — the Hon. Sayed Ali Imam, Mr. Gokhale, 

 and others. He mentions also certain Indian ladies 

 who are advancing the woman's movement in India — 

 Mrs. Cbaudhrani (a Brahmo graduate), Mrs. Ranaday 

 (a Settlement worker), Pandita Ramabai (Christian 

 missionary among Hindu girls). 



F.NGINEKRING TRIUMl'lIS IN INDIA. 



Then follow some colossal engineering achieve- 

 ments which are among the chief boons conferred on 

 India by her present rulers. Mr. Surya Prakash 

 describes the irrigation system which has turned five 

 and a half million acres of desert land in north- 

 western India, known as the Bar, into a granary 

 which in a single year exports grain worth about 

 three and a half millions sterling. The British 

 Indian (jovernment is further developing the other 

 canals, which will complete the greatest canal system 

 ever planned, with 322 miles of main canals, 185 

 miles of branches, and 2,714 miles of distributorie.s, 

 costing in all fifteen and a half millions, and irrigating 

 about two million square miles. 



, RESTORING ITS RIVER TO RANGOON. 



Mr. James .Armstrong tells how the engineer, 

 tJeorgc B. Buchanan, is saving the port of Rangoon 

 from being deserted by the river on whose banks it 

 springs. Rangoon sixty years ago was a mere dot on 

 the bank of the Hlaing River. To-day it is a modern 

 city of 300,000 ()eople, possessed of every modern 

 facility, electric light and tramways, a modern sewage 

 installation, etc., wide well-laid streets flanked by 

 imposing buildings. Mr. Buchanan undertook to 

 erect a draining wall to keep the river in its original 

 bed by the town. The sandy soil was, however, too 

 treacherous a foundation for any masonry. Accord- 

 ingly mattresses of brushwood 125ft. by 70 to 

 80ft., and 3ft. thick, were made out of six million 

 bundles of brushwood and 50,000 bundles of stakes. 



On these mattresses the heavy granite was deposited 

 and sunk into the silt, forming a durable foundation. 



ELECTRIC POWER AND RAILWAYS. 



Martin Heath describes the Tata hydro-electric 

 scheme by which the late Mr. Gostling designed to 

 utilise the tremendous rainfall on the western Ghauts, 

 to supply Bombay with water, light and power. The 

 supply will be at the cost of something between a 

 halfpenny and three farthings per unit. The system 

 has a head of water 1,734 ft. high, ten times as great 

 as that of Niagara Falls. Mr. F. A. Talbot applauds 

 tlie network of 35,000 miles of rail which stretches 

 over our Indian Empire. He mentions that there are 

 four gauges — 5 ft. 6 in., 3 ft. 3^ in., 2} ft,, and 2 ft. 

 The writer looks forward to the 300 miles bridge 

 between the railheads of tlie Russian and Indian rail- 

 way systems. When that gulf is bridged, or a rail- 

 way run through Persia to Baghdad and to Baku, the 

 distance between Bombay will be 5,700 miles ; the 

 overland journey may be completed in seven days. 



EDUCATION IN INDIA. 



Education in Hindustan is described by Mr. E. W . 

 Power. He reports that only ten per cent, of Indian 

 men and one per cent, of its women are able to read 

 and write. Only one village out of five has a school. 

 Progress has been made since the famous minute of 

 Lord Macaulay in 1835. Fergusson College at 

 Poona has as its head a Hindu Senior U'rangler of 

 Cambridge, who receives merely a subsistence allow- 

 ance of ^5 a month. 



Mr. Wallace describes the backward state of 

 building in India. Mr. S. H. Karr gives an enter- 

 taining account of Kashmir, which he describes as 

 the playground of India. Then follow short sketches 

 of some -Anglo-Indians, the English Premier of 

 Baroda, Lovat Eraser, and Dr. Neve. The whole 

 number is, as usual, admirably illustrated. 



THE STATE. 

 The November number shows the magazine still 

 prosecuting its role of organ of South .\frican self- 

 consciousness. The editor falls foul of General Botha, 

 whom he denounces as extremely " slim," full of 

 professions of desire to destroy inter-raeial feud, but 

 playing steadily into the hands of one race. Old 

 South .African homesteads are described by Dorothea 

 Fairbridge, and South African homes of to-day, 

 replete with modern convenience and luxury, by 

 .\(r. J. D. Robertson. 'I'he paper is accompanied 

 with admirable photographs of domestic interiors. 

 Mr. Fred Connell tells of his experiences, prospecting 

 and exploring, in Klein, Namaqualand. The 

 enormous wealth running to waste in unharnessed 

 waterfalls in South .Africa is the subject of another 

 paper — beautified with some lovely photographs of 

 mountain and waterfall. Mr. P. .M. Button recalls 

 the birlh of the gold industry. .Art in Natal is illus- 

 trated by reproductions of Mr . Wallace Paton's 

 pastels. Poetry and fiction are plentil'ul. 



