his enterprise has
proved highly profitable to the government, and its management
is entitled to the highest compliments.

The main canal was originally forty miles long, averaging 109
feet wide, with an average slope of one foot to the mile, and
capable of carrying seven feet four inches of water, or 10,000
cubic feet, per second. Twenty-eight miles have since been enlarged
to a width of 250 feet and the remaining twelve miles to a width
of 150 feet. The canal has been deepened to nine feet six inches,
and the intention is to deepen it one foot more. The banks of the
main canal are twenty-five feet wide at the top and are built
entirely of earth. A railway ninety-six miles long of three-foot
gauge has been constructed down the main canal, which is a great
convenience in shipping crops and pays a profit to the government.
It was constructed by the canal engineers while the ditch was
being dug. There are 390 miles of branch canals from thirty to
fifty feet wide and from six to eight feet deep, and 2,095 miles
of distributaries, or ditches running between villages and squares.
The banks of the branches and ditches are all wide enough for
highways, and thus enable the people to go from village to village
and get their crops to market. Several towns of considerable size
have already grown up; the largest, called Lyallpur, having about
10,000 inhabitants. It is the headquarters of the canal and also
of the civil authorities; and scattered through the irrigated
country are about 100 permanent houses used as residences and
offices by the superintendents and engineers.

XXI

THE FRONTIER QUESTION

The most sensitive nerve in the British Empire terminates in
Afghanistan, and the ghost of the czar is always dancing about
the Khyber Pass, through which caravans laden with merchandise
find their way across the mountains between India and the countries
of Central Asia. Every time there is a stir in a clump of bushes,
every time a board creaks in the floor, every time a footstep is
heard under the window, the goose flesh rises on John Bull's back,
and he imagines that the Great White Bear is smelling around the
back door of his empire in India. Peshawur is the jumping-off place
of the Northwest, the limit of British authority, the terminus of
the railway system of India and the great gateway between that
empire and Central Asia, through which everything must pass.
It is to the interior of Asia what the Straits of Gibralt