villagers to enable them to reclaim the wastes. A system of State forests was introduced under Lord Dalhousie's personal initiation. Old canals were repaired, new canals were vigorously commenced. A single one of these great irrigation works, the Bárí Duáb Canal, now fertilises the country with a network of over twelve hundred miles of main and distributing channels (1882), which have cost one and a half millions sterling, and water annually half a million of acres. While the productive powers of the soil were thus marvellously increased, the Grand Trunk Road was pushed forward across the whole breadth of the Punjab, and served as the main artery for a branching system of highways and communications.
The task of Public Instruction was also undertaken. Before ten years elapsed, schools both on the Western and on the Oriental system of education had been dotted over every District. The people were not slow to feel the quickening of the new moral life thus imparted to the province. At a great public meeting held at the sacred city of Amritsar, native delegates from the Sikh nobility, priesthood and people, solemnly agreed to reduce the heavy wedding expenses, which, by increasing the difficulty of providing for daughters in marriage, had acted as one of the chief causes of female infanticide. Similar meetings assembled in various parts of the Punjab with a view to social
