The great undertaking of a railroad from Calcutta to Delhi, a distance of more than 900 miles, and afterwards to the Sutlej will require some years for its completion. The government will thus be able to move troops, with great rapidity, to any desired spot, at any moment, and incalculable will be the advantages which India must reap on its accomplishment. I must refer the reader to a very sensible letter, written by Lieut.-Colonel Pitt Kennedy, military secretary to the late Sir Charles Napier, at that time Commander-in-Chief, in which he briefly points out the comparatively slow progress which Sir Charles made daily en route from Calcutta to the Upper Provinces, although, as he says, every facility practicable was afforded. He distinctly shows what a saving a railroad would effect, in the cost of the transport of goods from one station to another, and as clearly determines how the traveller may accomplish in weeks, what he now does in months, and in hours, what now occupies days.
The Asiatic Society was instituted in the year 1784. It comprises five scientific sections, as follow:
Section I., Oriental Literature and Philology;
Section II., Natural History;
Section III., Geology and Mineralogy;
Section IV., Meteorology and Physics;
Section V., Geography and Indian Statistics.
The Society meet on the first Wednesday evening in every month, to discuss the various subjects and papers submitted to their notice. The rooms are at the corner of Park-street, Chowringhee. Each member pays sixteen rupees a quarter, or sixty-four rupees a year.
The late Major-General Claud Martine, who was born at Lyons, in France, and died at Lucknow in September, 1800, left by will the sum of 350,000 Sicca rupees, or about £35,000 sterling, to the town of Calcutta, to put out at interest in government paper, on the best security; and the principal and interest to be placed under the protection of Government, or the supreme Court, in order that they might devise an Institution the most necessary for the public good of the town of Calcutta, or establish a school to educate a certain number of children of either sex, to a certain age, after which the boys were to be apprenticed to some profession, and the girls married when of proper age; "and," as the will runs, "every year a premium of a few rupees, or other thing, and a medal be given to the most deserving or virtuous boy and girl."