Lord Mayo's other great engine of internal development in the battle against famine was irrigation. A bare list of the works which he inaugurated, advanced, or carried out, would weary the reader. The Ganges Canal was extended, and, after seventeen years of deficit, took its place as a work no longer burdensome to the State. A new irrigation system, starting from the Ganges opposite Aligarh, and designed to water {178} the whole lower part of the Doab, from Fatehgarh to Allahabad, was commenced. The eastern half of Rohilkhand and the Western Districts of Oudh were at the same time being placed beyond peril of drought and famine by the Sarda Canal. Similar works for western Rohilkhand were being carried out by a canal from the Ganges. Plans were prepared, and the sanction of the Secretary of State partially obtained, for a project which would bring the waters of the Jumna to the arid tracts on the west of Delhi. While the Western Jumna Canal was thus to receive a vast extension, the Lower Jumna Canal was being pushed forward in the districts to the south-east of Delhi. Proceeding farther down the Gangetic Valley, we find works of equal promise being carried on from the Son (Soane) river through the Province of Behar--the province destined in 1874 to be the next Indian tract which was to suffer dearth. On the seaboard, Orissa (the Province of Lower Bengal which had last passed through the ordeal) saw its districts placed beyond the peril that has from time immemorial hung over them, by a vast system of canals and the development of means of communication with the outside world. Still farther south, the Godavari works were going forward. In the far west, projects for the drought-stricken districts of Sind were drawn up and investigated; while in Bombay, Madras, and other Provinces, many works of great local utility, although of less conspicuous extent, were initiated, pushed forward, or matured. {179} Lord Mayo, on his arrival in India, found two distinct sets of views entertained in regard to education. In some Provinces, among which Bombay held an honourable place, successful efforts had been made to found Public Instruction on a popular basis. In other Provinces--conspicuously in Bengal--high-class education flourished, while scanty provision was made for the primary or indigenous schools. The ultimate effect of this latter system, it was urged, would 'filtrate' downwards. Its immediate result, however, was to arm the rich and the powerful with a new weapon--knowledge--and to leave the poor under their old weight of ignorance in their struggle for life. Lord Mayo threw himself with characteristic energy into the efforts which were being made to remedy this state of things.