OBSEBVATIONS ON IKKIGATIOX WORKS IX IXDIA. 



149 



relief in time. The lesson taught by the Orissa famine of 18G6 

 had resulted in the State fully accepting, in principle, the 

 obligation to provide, in times of famine, the means of 

 snpporting life. In other words, to maintain relief works, 

 where wages sufficient for subsistence could be earned, and to 

 give gratuitous relief where necessary. This obligation has, I 

 believe I can rightly say, been acted up to. Owing, however, 

 to the experience gained in this famine and to the labours of a 

 Commission, of which that distinguished official, Sir Antony 

 Macdonnell, now Under Secretary of State for Ireland, was 

 President, I have no doubt that in future famines the manage- 

 ment will be more etficient, as regards relief, and more 

 economical in the expenditure to be incurred. ^ly own 

 recollections extend as far back as to the Orissa famine of 1866, 

 in which I am sorry to say that three-quarters of a million of 

 people perished; the greater number of starvation pure and 

 simple. That famine formed my introduction to India, and a 

 very doleful introduction it was. The crops had failed and 

 means of communication, by which sufficient food could be 

 speedily brought into the country, did not exist. Even the road 

 from Calcutta to Cuttack, the capital of Orissa, was unmetalled, 

 and this road is intersected by numerous large rivers which 

 were uubridged. Things are different now. Cuttack is 

 connected with Calcutta, about 250 miles distant, by a railway 

 which extends to Madras. There are two navigable canaL^, 

 passing from Cuttack to the seaboard, and there is inland water 

 communication, mainly by canals, but partly by rivers and 

 tidal creeks, between Calcutta and Cuttack. In speaking of 

 the canals between Cuttack and the coast, I may advert to the 

 rise of the port of Chandbally, vrhich, when I first saw it, in 

 the year 1867, was a small fishing village with a few mud huts. 

 After the Orissa famine of 1866, a Scotch captain, who had an 

 interest in a small steamer, the Cdt, which at one time plied 

 on the Clyde, explored the Orissa coast to see if he could find a 

 harbour sufficient to admit a vessel of licrfit drauo-ht enterincj it. 

 Eventually he found that he could navigate the Eiver Dhamrah 

 for 20 miles from the sea to Chandbally, whence Cuttack, 

 60 miles distant, could be reached by road and other nearer 

 places by rivers or creeks. The result of this exploration was, 

 that in five years, there were three separate lines of steamers 

 running between Calcutta and Chandbally. Up to the time of 

 the opening of the railway, in-so-far as I remember 1900, the 

 usual method of reaching Cuttack, from Calcutta, was by sea to 

 Chandbally and thence to Cuttack by canal. 



