284 KING: KADAPAH AND KARNÜL FORMATIONS. [PART IV. 
these only need to be made into bunds by the filling up of the narrow 
gaps cut by the streams. Cumbum tank is one of these splendid works 
of the old rulers; doubtless, of course, constructed at an enormous cost 
of life, labor, and time, such as we with our improved knowledge and 
experience would and could not require or exact; but there it is, and 
what would otherwise be a desert below the Cumbum ridge 1s now more 
or less of a garden. 
Other great and old tanks were, it is said, breached purposely by 
the people because, as the report is, fever and great sickness began to 
reign over the irrigated region. But whether this sickness was a 
result of the new climatal influences under which the villages were 
brought, and would have lasted always, is a question that cannot be 
decided now. Even now, since the new canal has been opened at 
Kurnool, fever and sickness have prevailed to a great extent; and the 
natives are said to attribute this to the new climatal conditions brought 
about by opening up ground and pouring water over a hitherto dry coun- 
try; and had they been able to do as they liked, it is possible the canal 
works might have gone like some of the larger of the old tanks. But 
it is not at all clear that the new irrigation works have had anything to 
do with the sanitary condition of the town, except in cleansing it; the 
prevalence of fever and other sickness for the last three years is more 
probably due to the fact of there having been an unhealthy period ac- 
companying one of more or less scarcity prevailing over the whole of 
these and the adjacent districts. Thus itis possible the breaching of 
the old tanks may have been carried out at a by-gone period of famine 
and sickness. 
Still, there the fact remains that the country by its contour is 
admirably cut up and laid out for the development of irrigation works: 
and these are works which are known to be of the greatest benefit to the 
country and the people. The canal of the Madras Irrigation and Canal 
Company is in its entirety a splendidly planned work; and it must 
( 284 ) 
