All these great cities are well worth a visit, containing, as they do, many interesting ruins and architectural remains of the old Hindoo and Mahomedan rulers of the country. Beyond Lahore, where the railway at present terminates, a fine road 260 miles long, will take the traveller across the classic streams of the Punjab, famous for Alexander the Great’s campaigns, up to Peshawur, on the extreme north-west boundary of the empire, where a force of 8000 men keeps watch over the fierce and turbulent races of the neighbouring mountains.
From Umballa, on the Punjab Railway, if the traveller strikes to the east, a good road of 40 miles will take him to the foot of the Himalayahs, whence he can ascend to Simla, situated amongst its groves of pines and rhododendrons, 8000 feet above the sea; and thence through some of the finest mountain scenery in the world, to Cashmere or Thibet, or the frontier of China.
You may vary the homeward route by visiting Calcutta, Madras, and Ceylon, or by going down the Indus to Kurrachee, and thence back to Bombay.
And over all these distances, and through this vast country, the traveller may journey as safely as in any part of Europe, in a healthy, enjoyable climate, if he chooses the proper time, and with his mind expanded by the contemplation of scenery differing widely from anything in the West, and of a state of social and national life which the most superficial glance will assure him is utterly foreign to all his previous experiences.
That, I think, is the chief good of all travel. The experience it brings lifts us out of our old grooves of thought, widens our narrow ideas, teaches us that as God has not made us all with the same coloured skins, so he has given us varieties of national character, which are admirable from their very diversity, and do not make us the less members of one common family, in which He is the great Father of us all.
For purposes of administration and government India is divided as follows:—The Viceroy and Governor-General of course rules over all, making his head-quarters at Calcutta in the cold weather, and at Simla in the summer. Under him are the Governors of Madras and Bombay, the Lieutenant-Governors of Bengal, the North-west Provinces and the Punjab, with their seats of government at Calcutta, Allahabad, and Lahore respectively; the Chief Commissioners of Oudh, the Central Provinces, Central India, and British Burmah, residing at Lucknow, Nagpore, Indore, and Rangoon; and the Commissioners of Mysore, Hyderabad, and Scinde. Some idea of the extent and importance of these provincial commands may be formed if we consider that Bengal proper, for example, is as large as Germany, and numbers 60 millions of inhabitants.
With regard to the Public Works of the country, their control and direction are confided to a separate department of the State, known as the Public Works Department, at the head of which is a Secretary, styled the Secretary to the Government of India in the P. W. D., and who is, in effect, the consulting engineer and professional adviser to the Viceroy and his council. He is assisted by Deputy-Secretaries for the separate branches of Irrigation, Railways, and Military Buildings.
To the head-quarters of each local government is similarly attached a Secretary, who is at once the mouthpiece and professional adviser of the Lieutenant-Governor or Chief Commissioner, and who, as Chief Engineer, is also head of the whole public works establishment of his province.
Subordinate to him are the Superintending Engineers, who may either have general charge of all the public works of a large district, or, as is more generally the case, are in special charge of some large work, such as a Canal or a Railway. Under the superintending engineers are the Executive Engineers, who are, in effect, the working units of the system. An executive engineer may have a range of new Barracks to build, a line of Road 80 to 100 miles long to keep in repair, or 30 or 40 miles of Canal or Railway to lay out and construct, and for the actual execution of this work he is primarily the responsible man. If the work is a new one, he has to prepare the detailed designs and working drawings under the advice and guidance of his superintendent, to frame the estimates, and to write the reports. When sanctioned, he has to lay out the work, and to find the workmen or contractors to execute it, to control the expenditure, to submit monthly accounts and progress reports, and to conduct a tolerably large correspondence. He will probably have two or three Assistant-engineers, five or six European Overseers, and eight or ten native Sub-Overseers, besides an Office establishment of clerks and accountants.