228 Proceedings oj the Asiatic Society. [Oct. 



the great natural drains of a country, and designed expressly to carry 

 away its surplus waters and its sewage to where they became the 

 least offensive, and at the same time, most useful in the economy 

 of nature. The Hooghly in this respect was not worse off than the 

 Thames, the Seine, the Rhine, or the Meuse in other countries. They 

 were the best of sewers, and they served their purpose most effectually. 

 To expect that masonry drains would do it better, is to expect that 

 irrigation from wells would supersede the rains. Their waters were 

 no doubt foul, and they could not be otherwise ; but Dr. Smith was 

 evidently misinformed as to the quantity of night soil daily thrown into 

 the river before Calcutta. It could not possibly be 180,000 tons, for 

 that would be equal to forty-eight lakhs of maunds a day, or taking 

 the population of the town at four lakhs, the number ascertained by the 

 last census, it would be twelve times the number or over sixteen times 

 the weight of the whole population. Admitting, however, that there 

 is a large amount of filth in the waters of the Hooghly, resource should 

 be had to chemistry and not to argument, to ascertain its extent. 



As to the unwholesomeness of the Hooghly water, Dr. Smith had 

 (the Babu thought) drawn a rather high coloured picture. The ex- 

 perience of ages had convinced the Hindus that the water of the 

 river for most part of the year was infinitely more wholesome than 

 that of tanks, and they generally incurred heavy expense in bringing 

 river water from a distance for drinking purposes, rather than take 

 the water of tanks from their doors. Had that water been so loaded 

 with the seeds of cholera and dysentery — so potent as an active poison, 

 — as Dr. Smith would make us believe, they would have certainly 

 suffered more severely than they do. The death rate of Calcutta 

 was no doubt high, but it was not higher among the Hindus, most of 

 whom drank the river water, than among the Mahomedans and Chris- 

 tians who eschewed that source of supply. This fact was the other 

 day most pointedly illustrated at the Small Pox Hospital at 

 Chitpur, where Dr. Chuckerbutty found that his Hindu patients who 

 obtained their water from the foulest part of the river opposite Chitpur, 

 suffered less from diarrhoea and dysentery than his Mahomedan 

 patients for whom he obtained water from a tank called Babu's Tank, 

 the best in the neighbourhood. These were facts which could not be set 

 aside by allusion to the prevalence of cholera among sailors, for Jack 



