74 



THE MADRAS HARBOUR, 



not altogether in accordance with the principles I have 

 explained as necessary to the stability of the work. There 

 is sand within the prohibited depth below water. It could 

 not be got rid off entirely. Its presence made itself felt in 

 the first heavy sea. The work stood well enough while the 

 sea was calm, but the waves soon found the sand within 12 

 or 15 feet of the surface, and either sucked it out or so 

 washed it into the interstices of the rubble stone that hollows 

 were formed under the blocks, and the latter sank a little — 

 as before at their outside edges — causing an opening along 

 the middle of the breakwater. But the first storm brought 

 the whole to a solid bearing, and it has never moved since. 

 A slight inequality in the level of the blocks is all that 

 remains to show the position of these once formidable diffi- 

 culties. 



We have now passed over the sites of the difficulties of the 

 Madras Harbour Works. As will be seen, they occupy but a 

 small space compared with the whole, and less than 500 feet 

 of each pier out of total lengths of three-quarters of a mile 

 each, and now we are fairly started on our straightforward 

 race against time. 



Here then may be an appropriate stage at which to give 

 a short description of the means employed to produce the 

 result, which, as I said before, requires a little more elaborate 

 design and forethought than can be expected from the gang 

 of coolies and their maistry. Hitherto the arrangements 

 have had to be modified to suit the circumstances of the 

 work in shallow water, and it would be tedious to describe 

 in detail all those modifications, but now the plan is appli- 

 cable in its integrity. 



We will begin then with the deposit of the rubble base. 

 When the work is in full progress, about 2,000 men and as 

 many women are employed at Ambatoor, 10 miles from 

 Madras, on the line of the Madras Railway, under a native 



