A few exceptional cases are specially treated. Any woman, for instance, who presents the works with a new baby is rewarded with a special donation of 1_s._ 4_d._ down. The wages were paid out of a guarded treasure tent every afternoon, and the people bought their own food from local merchants, who generally conveyed the grain on the backs of bullocks from Allahabad. The women ground it themselves, and made it into a sticky paste with a little salt, and that was what the families lived upon. Drinking water was served from kerosene tins by Brahmans so that none might be defiled. Villagers in want of the wage looked round the plain at sunrise for a red flag hoisted on a long pole. That showed the “recruiting station,” and there the families congregated in long rows, waiting to be allotted to gangers chosen from their own number. If any were already too starved for labour, they were fed up to working point; but there were none of the brown skeletons here that I saw in Orissa, because, as the disaster was not sudden, the relief had begun while the people were still in good condition. When the gangs were arranged, they were led out to some allotted portion of the works, the fellow-villagers remaining together for the stimulus of public opinion. In other districts the relief works took the form of new roads, but where I was the engineers had designed two great bunds or dams to catch the monsoon rains over a large and gently sloping area. For a few months each year shallow tanks would thus be formed, which could be tapped as required for the fields at a lower level, and, when dry, would leave a surface enriched with silt and moisture. The dams were called Garhaiya Kalan and Telghana from neighbouring villages, and one was seven miles long, the other a mile and a half. If these were not sufficient for the winter’s relief work, many more might be constructed, and the Government could always hope to recover part of the outlay by the increased value of the land, for which the landowners (zemindars) would as usual have to pay about half their income as revenue. And as I thought of it, I sighed for the orgy of battleships and old age pensions which we should enjoy if only our Government at home could scoop up the unearned increment like that! [Illustration: ON THE RELIEF WORKS. [_Face p. 276._ ]