Identifier: americanauniver08beac (find matches)
Title: The Americana : a universal reference library, comprising the arts and sciences, literature, history, biography, geography, commerce, etc. of the world
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Beach, Frederick Converse, 1848-1918 Rines, George Edwin, 1860-
Subjects: Encyclopedias and dictionaries
Publisher: New York : Scientific American Compiling Dept.
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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in 1900 was 117,613,218; and thetotal weight of goods carried slightly over43,000,000 tons. The chief highways are wellmetalled with a kind of limestone called kankar.but in Lower Bengal and similar districts, wherethere is no available stone, roughly-made bricksare used for road-metal. Many of the roads areplanted with avenues of trees. The total lengthof roads in India maintained by public authori-ties is over 152,000 miles, of which over 36,000miles are metalled. Posts, Telegraphs, and Telephones.— Thenumber of post-offices in India in 1899-1900 was10,823, and the length of postal lines 91,534 miles.The total number of letters and post-cards car-ried was 448,868,998; of packets of every kind,509,006,476. Adding the district post lines andthe political and military lines administered bythe Imperial post-office, the total length of thelines over which mails were carried was 127,934miles. The Indian telegraph system now con-sists (1900) of 52,909 miles of line, 170,766 miles INDIA.
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ur.-1-O Q- o2; )—l - H <• W-ta. INDIA of wire, and 283 miles of cable. The number oftelegraph offices is about 5,000, and the annual number of messages over 6,000,000. There aretelephone companies at important towns, suchas Bombay, Calcutta, Karachi, Madras, Maul-main, Rangoon, ami Ahmadabad. India is nowin direct telegraphic communication with theStraits Settlements and the Australian colonics,with Europe via Suez, via Teheran, and viaTurkey, with the East Coast of Africa, and withChina via Hhamo. Canals and Irrigation.— In some parts of In-dia, such as Sind, cultivation is impossible with-out irrigation, while in others, such as much ofLower Bengal, irrigation may be regarded asquite unnecessary ; but in the greater part of allthe provinces the rainfall is either insufficientfor the proper cultivation of the soil, or so un-certain as to expose the agriculturists to theconstant risk of scarcity and even of actualfamine. Hitherto irrigation has had only a sec-ondary place in

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