Besides the anicut, which crossed the Godavari itself, an aqueduct of forty-nine arches, each of forty feet span, was built across an arm of the river. This was built en¬ tirely in one short season, and then overwhelmed with a flood, which subsided without having injured the work.
At no time did he claim that his work was perfection, though there are few men responsible for large under¬ takings, who came so near that ideal as did he. His own simple confession is contained in these words : —
“I cannot say that we have obtained all our experience without mistakes and accidents. There have been many of both ; but we have found that they have helped to give us our present knowledge of Hydraulic Engineering in India, and a confidence which we never could have had, if we had attempted nothing. By God’s blessing, all the great works were in the main successful, and are now in profitable operation.”
“I have not the least doubt,” he adds, “ that both com¬ munications and irrigation will everywhere produce property to the value of much more than twenty times the outlay. The fact is that India, in its present unimproved state, is a mine of wealth far beyond that of any gold mine in the world. The richest mines in Australia only produce three and a half times the value of the labour bestowed on them, a man whose labour was worth £35 a year earning on an average £120 a year in mining.”
