DROUGHT AND WATERWORKS AT BOMBAY.
TICE Englishman who complains of the climate of his own country cannot, like Charles the Second, have been doomed to gain ex- perience in any other. One of these grumblers should have visited a city, not unknown or recently discovered, or under wild barbarian rule, about the end of last May or the beginning of June ; and he would have found a population of half a million or more, on an island less than twenty square miles in area, with the public wells and reservoirs dry and a rainless sky above. So it was then at Bombay. A month or more had yet to elapse be- fore the heavy rains of the monsoon would commence ; and there thousands of families found that the great grief of their daily life was intolerable thirst, the intolerable thirst of the Tropics. Every- body felt that something must be done and Bombay "made an effort." Water was brought by steam-boats from the yet unex- hausted sources in the islands of the harbour, and by railway—it- self a modern invention—from a distance of some thirty miles. Subscriptions were commenced for continuing this imported sup- ply ; and under the general pressure, fortunate wealthy persons who had private stores of water laid them open for public use. Still, however, the relief was glaringly insufficient. Twenty or at most thirty thousand persons out of half a million got water by those means. Disease set in, and afforded in a form capable of statistical expression some index of the indefinite miseries which the people were enduring.
Yet this was but an ordinary contingency in Bombay—one of almost calculable recurrence. There will be failing monsoons and over-hot seasons, as everybody in Bombay knows ; and a popula- tion which increases so rapidly that every census is a surprise is sure to want increasing quantities of water. It was just as certain seven or eight years ago that a day of distress for water would come, if nothing were done to prevent it, as it is now that the day did come and that its horrors have been endured. A few persons did indeed at that day descry the evil from afar, and amongst them was the Governor. Anxieties were expressed, and plans were talked of; but the suffering was not a present "emergency," and there was much else to do. Besides, any such design as one for waterworks in India has to run the gauntlet through a file of offices ; and is at last to be decided by gentlemen who never knew what it was to turn in vain the cock that supplied them from Chelsea or the New River—supplies them, perhaps' with water at which they turn up their noses, but which would have been pre- cious in Bombay, at that season sick with thirst. But what were the wealthy natives of Bombay themselves doing? What was done by the thriving house-owners of that in- creasing town, by the enterprising ship-owners of that swarming port, by the capitalist-employers of the people whose strength is dried up and whose courage is palsied more or less in every year, by the arid months of their waterless city ? These men, sagacious and quick enough in all private affairs, and of late given to right good constitutional grumbling in public matters,—surely they set about the matter for themselves, and only gave it up when they found it impracticable P—Ne. The usual spell was upon them, and they slept soundly enough to the burden of the old droning time—" Government should do it."
And so came 1854 with its drought and deaths. Lord Elphin- stone—all honour to him—has taken up the plan proposed in the days of Sir George Arthur,- if not before for bringing water from a distance of fourteen or fifteen miles. ?We do not discuss the plan or the objections to it ; we only say that it has been ap- proved, and that the site of the reservoir was there, the rains were there, the plans for utilizing both were known the necessity was patent, and was neither more-nor less urgent known, is seven or ten years ago—than it is now. Nothing is proposed now, which was not equally needed, equally proposed, and equally practicable then. But we might venture to calculate, that if the monsoon which just now relieves Bombay should prove abund- ant, and any other subject should urgently occupy the Govern- ment, Bombay will find itself just as badly prepared as it is now for its next year of consuminz drought. - The only reform which can save it is a reform of its own men—we mean, natives of wealth and of public mark. We might reckon upon the delay none the less for the subscription, if ever it be realized, with which the Justices of Bombay have proposed to ease by one-half the pressure of these strictly local works on the general taxation of India. Amongst the efforts for relief under the recent distress, one de- serves especial notice. Sir Jamsetjee dejeebhoy, whose extraordi- nary charities have won for him a British title and cosmopolitan fame, has at different periods devoted large sums to works for the supply of water, both at Bombay and Poonah ; and some of the most important structures of this kind in both those cities are of his providing. To these he has now added an extemporized effort for the present occasion. In the height of the drought, he caused large but shallow wells to be sunk in the ditch of the fort. The supply of water proved excellent in quality, and was most en- couraging in quantity, although the works were only in progress when the last accounts came away : hundreds of families were thus relieved. It is not the first time by many that important public wants have been met or mitigated by this remarkable man, when the British Government in India or his own countrymen could not or would not do it.
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