Added to all this building work, roads to the extent of five hundred miles, of which one hundred and fifty were hill roads, were laid out and made passable, raised and bridged in most cases, and in some places metalled. These works were scattered over the province from Bhamo to the old frontier of British Burma. In designing the roads it was remembered that the great trunk lines of communication were the great rivers in the centre and west of the province, and the railway in the east. All the main roads were designed to be feeders to the rivers or the rails. In addition to the larger roads, many hundreds of miles of tracks and rough district roads were cut through the forest and jungles, and a survey was begun, to open up the difficult Yaw country, through which we had afterwards to push troops. (_vide_ Chapter XXI.). I think it may be claimed that our engineers did their duty. The middle of Upper Burma, the dry zone, as it is called, differs in climatic conditions from the country to the south and north of it. The rainfall is deficient, and droughts, sometimes severe, are not unknown. The Burmese rulers were capable of large conceptions, but they lacked skill; and their great irrigation schemes, attempted without sufficient science, were foredoomed to failure. The largest works of this class existing, when we took the country, were the Mandalay and Shwèbo Canals, which were of little use, as even where the construction was not faulty they had been allowed to go to ruin. In Kyauksè Salin (Minbu district) and elsewhere there were extensive canals of a less ambitious nature, which although neglected were still of much service. Even in the turmoil of 1886 and the pressure of what was in fact a state of war, Sir Charles Bernard found time to attend to the irrigation systems; and as soon as a skilled engineer could be obtained from India, and funds allotted, the work of irrigation was tackled in earnest. The first business was to examine the existing systems and see whether they could be made use of. Before I left Burma in December, 1890, I had the pleasure of knowing that this work was in hand, and that further deterioration from neglect had been stopped, and also that new schemes were under consideration. The expenditure in Upper Burma at this time was very great. An army of fourteen thousand men cannot be kept in the field for nothing. The military police force was a second army, and there was besides all the cost of the civil administration. The incoming revenue was in comparison insignificant. In 1886-7 it had been £250,000 in round numbers, in 1887-8 it rose to £500,000--not enough to cover the public works expenditure alone.