India and Indian Engineering. / Three lectures delivered at the Royal Engineer Institute, Chatham, in July 1872

by J. G. Medley

The Mistrees, or native head-masons and carpenters, are generally intelligent and good men, quick to learn and easily managed, but few have any theoretical knowledge.

The native labourer is patient, docile, and lazy, never drinks, and is easily managed by anyone who understands him. Perhaps this is a good place to say a word or two about the natives generally, and their treatment by their English masters. Those who have any inherent antipathy to black or brown skins had better not go to India, and those who do go, and are anxious to find faults in the natives, will have no difficulty in satisfying themselves on that score. But, as I have already said, those Englishmen who live most amongst them, and have most to do with them, get to like them most, with scarcely an exception, and I can honestly say, after twenty years’ experience, that I am no exception to the rule. Learn their language well, spend a little time in studying their habits, prejudices, and modes of thought, and I am sure you will find the trouble repaid. If they are not very truthful, are indolent, and sometimes troublesome or even exasperating, it is no light thing that they are singularly temperate, wonderfully patient and good-tempered, very susceptible to kind treatment and good management, and that strikes, drunken brawls, and grumbling discontent are simply unknown.

Now, after so much preliminary dissertation, we may come to the more professional part of our subject, and I shall begin by making some remarks on the Materials with which the Indian engineer has to work, after which we will proceed to discuss the particular constructions in which they are employed, so far as these present any special points of interest to those conversant with similar structures at home.

There are many varieties of Stone in different parts of India, and it is employed in the various forms of ashlar, rubble, &c., very much as it is in Europe. Granites, limestones, and sandstones are extensively used in the localities where they occur, but the cost of carriage over bad roads to distant places necessarily restricts the employment of this material. In Southern India, laterite, a clay-stone, is extensively used, being easily worked, and becoming hard by exposure to the air. In Upper India, Delhi and Agra are famous for their red sandstone, and Jyepore for its white marble, of which the Taj and other famous buildings are constructed. Bombay has also many varieties of stone, notably the Poree-bunder limestone. Allahabad has some fine quarries of sandstone, of which the new government buildings have been constructed, and I recommend to your notice the account of the working of the Purtarpore Quarries, in the Professional Papers on Indian Engineering, as giving much practical information. Slate is generally scarce and inferior, but some fine quarries have lately been opened out at Dalhousie, and in the Khuttuk Hills, in the Punjab.

There is a kind of soft stone called moorum, found in Central and Western India, which, though almost useless as a building material, is extensively employed for road metalling. Kunkur, too, is quite an Indian speciality, though it is almost entirely confined to the North-Western Provinces. It is a peculiar kind of oolitic limestone, found in beds just below the surface, and is of two kinds; one adapted for building purposes, in which it strongly resembles artificial concrete; the other answering admirably for road metalling, for which purpose it is broken into lumps about the size of an egg, drenched with water, and then rammed until perfectly smooth, after which it is allowed to dry before the traffic comes on it.

The manufacture of artificial stone by Ransome’s process has been tried at Bombay on a small scale, but not with success in an economical point of view.

In the greater part of Upper India, and over much of the rest of India as well, Brick is the chief building material, and there are few engineers in India who will not have much to do with brick-making. I would therefore strongly recommend you to make yourselves well acquainted with the latest improvements in the art, at the same time bearing in mind certain Indian specialities, which will limit the use of many of these methods; these are the cost of carriage, the general absence of coal fuel, the dearness of other fuel, the absence of skilled subordinates, and the disinclination of natives to be driven out of their own customs, and to try experiments. But these circumstances, remember, should only serve to guide your inquiries, on no account to restrain them, for similar difficulties will always be found in the path of improvement everywhere.

You will find very full information on Indian brick-making in the ‘Roorkee Treatise on Civil Engineering,’ and I shall only here advert to a few salient points of the subject.

There is plenty of good brick-earth to be found, but the cost of carriage prevents the same care being taken as at home in the selection and admixture of clays. The clay is often tempered by hand, and then taken straight to the moulding-table; but pug-mills are now pretty common, worked by bullock power. The bricks are usually sand-moulded, and are made of the English size, and stacked in temporary sheds to dry. Brick-making machines have occasionally been tried; but their expense, the difficulty of repair, and the cheapness of hand labour, have always driven them out of the field. Hollow bricks, too, are never seen; and as I think they would be found to be much cooler in the walls of buildings than solid bricks, I would recommend anyone to acquire information of their manufacture and cost.