RAILWAYS

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and it will only be on the outside fringe of civilised existence
 that the far more handy and practical “tonga” will
still be running. Railways will ascend the mountains
and pierce the frontier barriers. India will be linked up
with Russia, and Afghanistan will be no longer permitted
to outrival China in the persistency of a benighted isolation.
[t needs no spirit of prophecy to forecast such certainties
as these.
Colonel Chesney, writing of the days of the East India
Company, says: “The Court of Directors, almost to the
termination of their existence, did not recognise the prosecution
 of public works as a necessary part of their policy.
The construction of a road or a canal was regarded by
them, in their earlier days, much in the same light that a
war would be—as an unavoidable evil, to be undertaken
only when it could not be postponed any longer, and not,
if possible, to be repeated.” Yet it was before the final
disappearance of the Company that the grand trunk road
from Calcutta to the north was laid down nearly to the
‘imits of the North-West (now called the United) Provinces;
and the greatest irrigation project in the world, the Ganges
canal, was completed by 1854. A year previously the
advantages of railways in the general scheme of commercial
 development were urged by Lord Dalhousie, and
it was not long afterwards that three great main lines—
the East Indian, from Calcutta to the north; the Great
Indian Peninsula, from Bombay to the east; and the
Madras railway—were commenced. These lines were
constructed by private companies under a Government
guarantee of 6 per cent. on the invested capital.
There are now (March 31, 1899) 22,491 miles of line
open to traffic representing the property of three guaranteed
companies and thirteen “assisted” companies, as well as
twenty-five “state” and twenty-four native state lines. The
East Indian is now a State line, Government retaining the
power to purchase a guaranteed line at certain periods under
the original terms of the contract. As comparatively little
capital has been invested by English capitalists in Indian
-ailways, Government has raised the funds required for