The annexation of the Punjab and Burma are the crowning events of the nineteenth century. Lord Wellesley had delivered India from Tippu, and established the paramount power of the East India Company over the Mogul viceroys and the Mahratta princes. Lord Hastings had converted Nipal into a staunch ally, and stamped out the predatory powers of Central India. Lord Dalhousie annexed the empire of Runjeet Singh, excepting Cashmere, and the empire of the Alompras, excepting Upper Burma, and thus laid down frontiers which remained unchanged for an entire generation.[26] [Sidenote: Lord Dalhousie as an administrator. Progressive policy.] §10. But Lord Dalhousie left his mark in history as an administrator rather than as a conqueror. Having annexed the Punjab and Pegu, he threw his whole soul into the administration. The Punjab was soon traversed with roads like a Roman province, and one magnificent and difficult road was completed from Lahore to Peshawar. Rangoon was cleared of malarious jungle, and planned out in streets and roads like a European city. The working of British administration in the new provinces has been most successful. Lord Dalhousie not only delivered the population from oppression and violence, but introduced order, liberty, and law, such as prevails in no Oriental country outside the British pale from the Atlantic Ocean to the Chinese Seas. Lord Dalhousie may have petted the Punjab and Pegu at the expense of Madras and Bombay, but he was never unmindful of the interests of the Anglo-Indian empire. He is the first Governor-General who laboured for the benefit of India in the interests of the British nation, as well as in those of the East India Company. [Sidenote: Public works of the East India Company.] Public works in India before the advent of Lord Dalhousie had chiefly consisted of military and civil buildings, such as barracks, arsenals, jails, and hospitals. The Company, however, was the landlord of India, and the bulk of the people were its tenants; it had therefore sought to improve the condition of its tenants after the manner of landlords. It encouraged the cultivation of tea, coffee, and cotton. It restored choked-up channels, which had been dug by Mohammedan Sultans of former days for watering their palaces, gardens, and hunting grounds; and it converted them into canals for irrigating a large acreage in the North-West Provinces. Such was the origin of the Western and Eastern Jumna canals, which were constructed in the days of Lord William Bentinck and Lord Auckland. Each canal received the water from the upper stream on the slope of the Himalayas, and irrigated the high lands which were above the level of the lower stream. Above all, the Company sanctioned the Ganges canal which was purely a British undertaking, constructed for navigation as well as for irrigation. [Sidenote: Northern India: old caravan routes.]