railway enterprises of this class to the countenance and encouragement of the Government?  I lay it down as a fundamental principle, that we ought to look to the eventual establishment of one uniform railway gauge for the whole of India.  The experience of England is conclusive as to the inconvenience of a double or conflicting railway gauge.  After the expenditure of an untold amount of money in Parliamentary conflicts, the broad gauge of England has been compelled to take the narrow gauge on its back, and the whole capital expended upon the former may be said to have been thrown away.  But what does this resolution in favour of an uniform gauge imply?  It will, I think, be admitted that the main object of an uniform railway gauge is to enable the several railway lines to exchange their plant in order to avoid transhipment of freight.  But if the plant of the subsidiary line is to be transported along the main lines, it must be sufficiently well finished to be fitted to travel in safety at high speed; and if the plant of the main lines is to travel along the subsidiary lines, the latter must have rails sufficiently heavy, and works of construction sufficiently substantial, to support it.  Moreover, where streams or rivers are encountered they must be bridged.  In short, the subsidiary lines must be built in a manner which would make them nearly as expensive as the main lines; in other words, railways must not be introduced into any part of India where we cannot afford to spend from 13,000_l_. to 15,000_l_. a mile upon them.  I am not prepared to accept this conclusion.  I have been a good deal in America, and I know that our practical cousins there do not refuse to avail themselves of advantages within their reach, by grasping at those which are beyond it.  In 1854, I travelled by railway from New York to Washington.  We had several ferries to cross on the way, but we found that the railway with the ferries was much better than no Railway at all.  In short, in America where they cannot get a pucka railway, they take a kutcha one instead.  This, I think, is what we must do in India.  There are many districts where railways costing 3,000_l_. or 4,000_l_. a mile might be introduced with advantage, although they would not justify an expenditure of from 10,000_l_. to 15,000_l_. a mile.  We have only to be careful that kutcha lines are not mistaken for pucka ones—­that they are not allowed to set up a rival system as against the main lines, or to occupy ground which should be appropriated by the latter.

[Sidenote:  Carriage dak to Allahabad.]

As the railway from Benares to Allahabad was not yet complete, Lord Elgin and his suite performed this part of the journey by carriage dak.  They travelled by night; ’each individual of the party occupying his own separate carriage, and being conveyed along at a hand gallop by a succession of single ponies, relayed at stages of four to five miles in length.’  In the letter which describes this, he adds the characteristic remark: