at animates the people of India to
benevolent exertions, without once calling in question the truth of
the assertion of our metropolitan friends that 'the people of India
have no public spirit'.

Manmor, a respectable merchant of Mirzapore, who traded chiefly in
bringing cotton from the valley of the Nerbudda and Southern India
through Jubbulpore to Mirzapore, and in carrying back sugar and
spices in return, learning how much travellers on this great road
suffered from the want of water near the Hiliya pass, under the
Vindhya range of hills, commenced a work to remedy the evil in 1822.
Not a drop of wholesome water was to be found within ten miles of the
bottom of the pass, where the laden bullocks were obliged to rest
during the hot months, when the greatest thoroughfare always took
place. Manmor commenced a large tank and garden, and had laid out
about twenty thousand rupees in the work, when he died. His son, Lalu
Manmor, completed the work soon after his father's death, at a cost
of eighty thousand rupees more, that travellers might enjoy all the
advantages that his good old father had benevolently intended for
them. The tank is very large, always full of fine water even in the
driest part of the dry season, with flights of steps of cut freestone
from the water's edge to the top all round. A fine garden and
shrubbery, with temples and buildings for accommodations, are
attached, with an establishment of people to attend and keep them in
order.[3]

All the country around this magnificent work was a dreary solitude--
there was not a human habitation within many miles on any side. Tens
of thousands who passed this road every year were blessing the name
of the man who had created it where it was so much wanted, when the
new road from the Nerbudda to Mirzapore was made by the British
Government to descend some ten miles to the north of it. As many
miles were saved in the distance by the new cut, and the passage down
made comparatively easy at great cost, travellers forsook the Hiliya
road, and poor Manmor's work became comparatively useless. I brought
the work to the notice of Lord William Bentinck, who, in passing
Mirzapore some time after, sent for the son, and conferred upon him a
rich dress of honour, of which he has ever since been extremely
proud.[4]

Hundreds of works like this are undertaken every year for the benefit
of the public by benevolent and unostentatious individuals, who look
for their reward, not i