138 



C. W. ODLINGj C.S.I._, M.INST.C.E._, ON ORISSA : 



Works Subordinate, a native who had been sent to super- 

 intend the painting of the liohthouse, had misappropriated 

 the good linseed oil provided for the purpose and was using poppy 

 oil instead. There was no probability of the statement being 

 correct, as poppy oil is the more expensive of the two, but I 

 was directed to proceed to the lighthouse and to find out what 

 was the matter. I soon ascertained that the real ground of 

 complaint was that the Public Works Subordinate refused to 

 fall in with the board-ship discipline which the lighthouse- 

 keeper, who had at one time been mate on board a collier, had 

 imposed on the small community of which he was the head, for 

 he was customs and port officer in addition to his primary 

 duties. The lighthouse is situated on an island, divided by a 

 narrow creek from the mainland. Excellent oysters, a rarity in 

 India, were to be had, and spotted deer were plentiful. The 

 lighthouse-keeper employed a huntsman, who was expected to 

 produce two deer for every three charges of powder and shot 

 supplied to him, and, I gathered, suffered correction if his tale 

 ran short. Tiger tracks were abundant, but I never saw a tiger. 

 The situation has its own disadvantages : in the eighties the 

 port and customs officials were drowned by a high tidal wave 

 which swept over the island ; their present quarters takes the 

 form of a refuge house, with easy access to the roof both from 

 inside and outside. 



The lighthouse is 134 feet high, and built of laterite, a kind of 

 red ironstone, plentiful in Cuttack. A tablet records that it 

 was commenced on December 6th, 1830, and finished on October 

 16th, 1837. Light first exhibited March 1st, 1838, H. Kighy, 

 Second Lieutenant, Executive Engineer. The lighthouse is 

 seventy miles by river from Cuttack and upwards of two hundred 

 by sea from Calcutta. Material, food and labour must have 

 been brought from these two places, and contractors, if there 

 were any, would be in England called gangers. The great 

 majority of the workmen were certainly Uriyas, so that, 

 even at that early date, they were capable of carrying out large 

 works under competent direction which, in this case, can hardly 

 have been experienced, as Second Lieutenant Kighy could not 

 have been twenty-four years of age when he built that light- 

 house. It seemed to me that young men in India sometimes 

 got chances which they would not have obtained elsewhere. In 

 my travels over some VOO to 800 miles of embankments, some 

 of them in parts of tlie country seldom visited by Europeans, I 

 found that three Government officers, and thiee only, were 

 known to the natives everywhere even in the remotest parts. 



