In the middle of 1893 I became Commissioner of the Northern Division. The country was perfectly quiet and in order. Settled times had succeeded the bustle and confusion of the pacification. There was now leisure to prepare and execute projects for the benefit of the people. First among these was the Mu Valley Railway, which runs from Sagaing to Myit-kyina, opening up the fertile, land-locked plains of Wuntho, where a year or two earlier unhusked rice sold for ten rupees a hundred baskets, and rich lands farther north. A branch runs to Katha, on the Irrawaddy, below Bhamo, with which there is connection by ferry. Between Mandalay and Sagaing there is still a gap in the system. As soon as funds are available the Irrawaddy must be bridged, and through communication established from Rangoon to Myit-kyina. Even more important than the railway were two great irrigation schemes for watering the dry districts of Mandalay and Shwebo. These were being examined and matured. When I rode through Shwebo in the autumn of this year with the Deputy Commissioner, Mr. G. W. Shaw,[229] the fields were as hard as the stony-hearted pavement of Oxford Street. Anxiously the people watched the sky, longing for the appearance of the smallest cloud. Rice was scarce, and edible roots formed the staple fare of the peasantry. We were perilously near the Famine Code. In those days, if Shwebo had one good year in three, it reckoned itself fortunate. Luckily, at harvest-time there was always work in Lower Burma; and if the season failed, crowds streamed down to the teeming rice-fields of the Delta, whence they honourably remitted sustenance for the women, the aged, and the infirm left in their homes. Though emigration is easy and common enough, most Burmans are strongly attached to their birthplace, and cling with passionate affection to their ancestral lands. Mortgages are kept alive for a century or more, the hope of regaining possession being abandoned with extreme reluctance. Thus, though many farmers from the sterile north took up land in the Delta and made new homes, the majority hastened back to their native districts at the faintest prospect of a good season. Now in Shwebo, thanks to the Irrigation Canal, the face of the country is changed. Thousands of acres formerly dependent on precarious rainfall receive ample and regular supplies of water, and are under continuous cultivation. The pretty song of the women as they plant out the seedlings from the pyogin[230] is doubtless heard as of yore, now not intermittently, but each year as the season recurs. A District which was too often a barren waste is now a rich harvest-field, giving grain not only for local use, but for export. Similar good results have been obtained in the Mandalay district by similar means. These irrigation systems, which not only enrich the people, but also yield a handsome revenue, were planned and executed with all the skill and science of