some one. Things there are not much unlike the country spoken of in the Arabian Nights' where genii abounded. The chronicler of the events recorded of Cairo, says that a geni appeared one day before a Dervish, and claimed compensation because the latter had knocked out the eye of his daughter. I have had nothing to do with your daughter,' replied the Dervish; 'how, then, could I have knocked out her eye?' 'When you threw away some date stones, one of them struck her and injured her eye,' said the geni. 'I did not know your daughter was there, and if she is invisible I am not to blame if a stone casually thrown hits her.' Something of the kind is sure to occur among the multiplicity of Boards here. Prompt action throws some office or some one out of gear. The routine of business in Madras is very cumbersome, how much more so than in other parts of India may be gathered from the following illustrative incident :-The Proceedings of the Madras Government, July 23, 1877, 2,6340, show that a petty squabble between the collector and the district engineer arose out of the former storing rice in an unfinished katcherry, and resulted in three printed pages of foolscap being referred first to the Board of Revenue, and then to the Governor in Council for orders, and at the end of three weeks the squabble had reached the stage of the district engineer being called upon to furnish a reply and explanation. In other parts of India, where divisional commissioners exist, the matter would have been settled in five minutes without troubling either the Board of Revenue or the Government. This kind of procedure manifestly greatly hindered and rendered very cumbersome the work of famine relief, in matters where the greatest urgency was required as much as in questions where delay was of comparatively little consequence. Lord Lytton was

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to alter all this, so far as famine was concerned, on his visit to Madras.

The Viceroy left Simla for Madras on August 16.1 A stay was made at Poona, where, in consultation with Sir Richard Temple and the officers of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway, arrangements were made for pouring grain into Madras by railway at the rate of 1,200 tons per day. It was also arranged that 50 new engines and 300 waggons should be ordered by telegram from England, to be delivered with the least possible delay. Arrangements were, in addition, made that all other traffic whatsoever should give place to the conveyance of grain. It was at once pointed out that the Viceroy was running in the teeth of his dependence upon free trade as described in the minute of August 12. This arrangement was made, it is said, in deference to the opinion expressed by the Governor of Madras that all sea imports would cease in October and November. The stipulation was withdrawn as soon as possible.

On August 27 the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos went to the confines of his Presidency at Raichore to meet the Viceroy, and after bringing his Excellency to Bellary, left him there and returned to Madras to receive Lord Lytton with due honour. Whilst in Bellary the Viceroy conferred with the collector and visited the relief camps. Early on the morning of Wednesday, August 29, in great state, troops lining both sides of the road from the central station to Government House, his Excellency was received in Madras.

The forenoons of the three following days were

1 His Excellency's suite was composed of Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, K.C.S.I., Head of the Department of Revenue, Agriculture, and Commerce, an old Madras official, who was substituted for Sir Andrew Clarke at the last moment; Mr. Guildford Molesworth, Consulting Engineer on State Railways; Mr. S. C. Bailey, C.S.I., Personal Assistant to H.E. the Viceroy; Mr. C. E. Bernard, C.S.I.; and Colonel O. T. Burne, C.S.I., C.I.E., Private Secretary.

spent in prolonged discussion of the situation and the means to be adopted to face the calamity; the afternoons were spent in visiting relief camps; the evenings were given to entertainment; the greater part of the nights to correspondence and keeping the current work of the Empire going. The days were laborious, and the nights also. The conferences mark an era in famine administration in India, and details of the topics which formed the subject of discussion may, therefore, be useful. These were nine in number, viz. (1) Private trade; (2) works; (3) relief; (4) three-pie children; (5) relief camps; (6) village relief; (7) village agency; (8) superior agency; and, most important of all, (9) the form of administration by which the campaign should continue to be fought. In the suite of the Viceroy was MajorGeneral Kennedy, R.E., Secretary Public Works Department, Bombay, whose administration of the famine affairs of that Presidency was held to have been most praiseworthy and successful. General Kennedy was present at the discussions. The points which formed the groundwork of conference were these:

PRIVATE TRADE.

I.—The sufficiency of private trade, up to the present time, was discussed in the sixth para. of his Excellency's minute.1 The Madras Government looked with doubt on the continued capacity of the trade to provide (not to carry) sufficient supplies of food for the future. It was admitted on all hands that it was impossible to make any but the vaguest estimate of what the stocks. actually available in India were, but it had been found that the Bengal authorities estimated that there were some 350,000 tons, which ought, and would if need be, be diverted to Madras without touching on the actual

1 This minute will be found quoted in full in the Appendix to vol. ii.

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Till

food requirements of Bengal up to October next. October came it was impossible to make a forecast of the prospects of the main crop of the year, and consequently of the stocks available for export.

From the Punjab, North-West Provinces, and Central Provinces, there were large stocks awaiting despatch, and these stocks would keep the great Indian Peninsula Railway fully employed in delivering at Raichore, at the rate of 1,000 to 1,200 tons a day, for the next two or three months. Supplies from this source could not be trusted to last beyond that period, as prices were rising, and there was a tendency for the current of trade to revert towards Cawnpore and Agra.

A

II.-The necessity of non-interference with private trade was dwelt upon at length in the minute. special argument used by the Viceroy was that a partial interference with trade was scarcely possible, and if Government took up the work at all, it must take it up for all the affected tracts, which it was not in a position to do financially. It was also urged that the landing and carrying capacity of Madras for distributing what might be brought into its ports was scarcely equal to the work now thrown upon it, and that the Government could not take up the duty of carrying save at double the expense which was incurred by private trade, and that a Government transport agency interfered directly and indirectly with the efforts of private trade to distribute, quite as grievously as Government importation checks its efforts to import.

III.-Distribution into the interior was discussed in para. 23 of the minute, where it is estimated that from 4,500 to 5,000 tons of food might have to be carried. daily into Madras, Mysore, and Hyderabad. A note on this subject by Mr. Bernard shows that the railway system of the Presidency altogether should, with the

help of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, be able to distribute daily 4,000 tons as follows:

The impolicy of petty works was also considered. Notwithstanding their inutility, and despite the recognition by the Government of Madras of the necessity for bringing the people on to works under professional supervision, the figures at that period showed only about a quarter of a million on large works under Public Works Department, to three-quarters of a million on petty works. One serious objection to petty works, which the experience of the Bengal famine had shown, was that not only do the people on them give less than a fair day's work for their wage, and not only are peculation and demoralisation rife, but the works themselves are too often worse than useless. They are left at the end of the famine incomplete, either from gaps in the earthwork where the country was difficult, or from want of masonry bridges, or simply the exigency being overfrom the absence of any reason for completing them, and local funds are unable either to complete or maintain them. Some parts of Behar contain, in the shape of unfinished tanks and fractional portions of roads, painful records of ill-considered undertakings, perverted industry, and wasteful expenditure. As will be inferred from the figures already quoted, when out of two millions of people receiving wages or subsistence from Government, not more than one-eighth are employed under professional supervision, the waste in Madras must have been great.

Another point under this head was-Has the Madras