Lord Mayo, alike on his tours and in his Cabinet, set himself to remedy this state of things. 'There is scarcely a fault,' runs one of his Minutes on a certain undertaking, 'which could have been committed in the construction of a great work, which has not been committed here. Estimates a hundred per cent. wrong--design faulty--foundations commenced without the necessary examination of substratum--no inquiry into the excess of cost over estimates during progress.' In another case: 'I have read with great sorrow this deplorable history of negligence, incapacity, and corruption; negligence in the conduct of {173} every superior officer who was connected with the construction of these buildings from the beginning; incapacity to a greater or lesser extent on the part of almost every subordinate concerned; corruption on the part of the contractors.' Elsewhere: 'I have read the report on the barracks. It is quite dreadful. There is not a man referred to who seems to have done his duty, except one who was unmercifully snubbed. This report will assist me in the reorganisation of the Department.' But out of heart as he sometimes came away from such inspections, he was unwilling to condemn the individual officers hastily, and his eyes soon opened to the fact that the system itself was essentially to blame. In the first place he found that the brain power of the Department was overworked. Inspecting Officers were held responsible for a larger area than they could possibly give attention to; result--want of supervision. In the second place, a series of vast works were scattered at one and the same moment over the whole country without corresponding additions to the staff--too great haste. In the third place, engineers were placed in executive charge of wide tracts, while the amount of correspondence and purely office work glued them to their chairs indoors, and precluded them from overlooking what was going on outside--no personal management. Lord Mayo's visit to certain railway works under construction by private contractors, and about the same time to a building being erected by the Public {174} Works Department, forced this last defect of the system strongly on his mind. At the private contractors' works he saw three European gentlemen, umbrella in hand and their heads roofed over by enormous pith hats, standing out in the hottest sun, and watching with their own eyes the native workmen as they set brick upon brick. In the building under erection by the Public Works he found only the coolies and bricklayers, without supervision of any sort. On inquiry, the engineer in charge pleaded office duties, the subordinate engineer pleaded the impossibility of looking after a great many works at the same time throughout a considerable District; and the net result was, that Government had to put up with loss of money and bad masonry. Lord Mayo exclaimed: 'I see what we want--good supervision and one thing at a time.'