24 The Means of Transit in India. [Jan., 



men, and furniture was tied upon a charpoy, or bedstead, and car- 

 ried by four men. 



With few exceptions, little use was, in former times, made of 

 the rivers of the country, and nothing seems ever to have been done 

 to improve their navigation. In the heavy freshes, rafts of timber 

 and circular boats of wicker-work covered with leather were floated 

 down some of the larger streams, but on very few of the rivers was 

 any attempt ever made to take laden vessels up the stream. Still 

 less use was made of the canals of irrigation, though many of them 

 were well adapted for water-carriage during six or eight months of 

 the year. The backwaters of the eastern and western coasts were 

 turned to somewhat more account, and a considerable traffic was 

 carried on by means of coasting craft. In the districts of Bengal 

 and the Punjab occurs the principal extent of river navigation in 

 India, where, through the most populous part of the country, an 

 area extending over about forty square degrees, and embracing the 

 courses of the Ganges and Jumna on the west and south, the Brah- 

 mapootra and Megna on the east, was formerly almost entirely 

 dependent upon water communication. 



Attention seems to have been, at an early date, paid by the 

 British Government to the improvement of communication through 

 the backwaters on the western coast of India ; but the first attempt 

 to introduce canal navigation was by the formation of a channel to 

 connect Madras with the Ennore backwater, and which now forms 

 part of the East Coast Canal. 



Soon after the conquest of Assam the difficulties in the naviga- 

 tion of the Brahmapootra, and the want of good communication by 

 land with the upper parts of the valley, first suggested the expe- 

 diency of applying steam to secure the desired facilities ; and steam- 

 vessels have ever since been successfully employed on many of the 

 Indian rivers. In order the more eifectually to organize the ser- 

 vices of their river steamers the Bengal Government, in 1855, 

 established an Inland Steam Department, their fleet at that time 

 numbering five steamers, and five flats, which were employed on 

 the rivers Ganges and Brahmapootra, between Calcutta and Alla- 

 habad and Assam. On the other side of India the Bombay Govern- 

 ment also possessed an Indus Steam Flotilla, whose vessels plied 

 regularly between Kurrachee and Mooltan, and they had also one 

 steamer on the Euphrates ; and in Pegu ; six river steamers, with 

 flats or troop vessels attached, kept up regular communication 

 between Eangoon and all the stations on the river Irrawaddy. In 

 subsequent years the different Government flotillas were gradually 

 broken up, and the duty of providing for the river navigation of 

 India was left oj)en to private enterprise. 



The steam companies at present existing, and by whose vessels 

 the steam transport of India (both river and coasting traffic) is now 



