THE BOMBAY RAILWAY.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 906, 8 April 1854, Page 3

THE BOMBAY RAILWAY.

We lia'l the pleasure a few days ago to visit the gr^al railway winks, now nearly completed, be-

yond the present terminus at Tannah. Unfortunately we are not engineers enough to pronounce on the merits of the groat viaduct over the Tannah waters or the tunnels through the hills which abut on the Kaloo river. We can only say that, to our untutored perceptions, they were all entirely good. We indulged, however — and would not be denied — in a great deal of griffin-like admiration, and laid in a stock of questions and answers -wherewith to puzzle our less fortunate acquaintances. Will our readers allow us to ask them a few? How many coolies, then, do they suppose are equivalent at engine and boiler cleaning to one labourer at home ? They don't knovr, of course. Well, then, in cur diiver's estimation, • about forty ! If you give'em a job, sir, says he, which they can sit on their haunches to, they sit and rub rub rub all day as contented as possiblp. We subsequently consulted higher authorities, we -must mention, on this question of the relative effectiveness of labour here and in England, and • received answerfe more creditable to the native workmen, which we shall presently record. ' Our next question was asked at, as our Scotch 'friends say, the Clock, which informed us, rather •to our astonishment we must confess, thst we had contrived to consume an hour between Boree ■Bunder and Bhandoop — a distance, we venture to suppose, of not more than eighteen miles. Even railways have become ' slow' in India, thought we. It is, we believe, economical to work at i low speeds, and to a moderate pace while going we do not intend to object. But a little more English smartness at the stations might, we should think, be accomplished without any very • sensible addition to the monthly expenses. Beyond the open portion of the line, the kindness of friends had provided us with a truck. And now we should like to know which of our readers can tell what the effect of an incline of only 1 in 100 has upon a wheeled carriage on the rails. "The steepest little bits on Malabar hill, we may tell them — for we are full of our superior information to day — give a slope of 1 in 20, so that they may imagine a slope of 1 in 100 to be scarcely perceptible, — such in our ignorance at least we had imagined, though surprised subsequently to discover that 1 in 200 was a rise quite perceptible when once it had been pointed out. But the question to our readers was, how wi'l a wheeled truck behave itself on the rails when it finds itself on a slope of 1 in 100. Of course they give it up. Ours then commenced racing with a horse that was being trotted by the side of it, ready harnessed to be put to draw it when we should all arrive at level ground. What the horse might have done in the way of speed we do not know, but the horseboy certainly put his best foot foremost, and did all that he knew to keep ■up with us, and was dead beaten before we got to the bottom of the incline — the truck, with its passengers running on the rails merely, of course by its own gravity. This little dart, down almost so unnoticeable a hill, gave one a lively notion of what will happen on the Ghats whenever a waggon shall take upon itself to try its skill at running down the rails there ungutded and uncontrolled. We vote most certainly for our correspondent's perpendicular lift, in a box up a shaft, with sides that magically contract below, so < that, as promised by our esteemed contributor, • there can be no danger of any precipitation. In the tunnels we met several parties of natives -admiring all the Pandurltritya ; and certainly when such things as these come to be seen in many parts of India, which we hope they now soon will, the British nation will be well prepared to reply to the taunt which demands what, when we are all kicked out, shall we have left behind -us to compare with the Mussulman Tombs, and the Budbist Cave Temples. The printing press, Eteam boats, railways running over the arms of the sea, and through the bowels of the hills — to -say nothing of the wires which teach the lightning to speak, and the others which " teach it to behave itself " — may be very fairly set off against tombs, however beautiful, and artificial caverns, however grand and imposing. The highest and thoroughly competent autho- . -ritiss to whom we appealed on the subject of the ' efficiency of native labour, told us a belter, but still a very lamentable story. There is it seems a great deal of diversity. In the very worst cases it seems to be settled by actual figures that sixteen men aud eight women have had to be employed to do the work which two navvies are known to do at home. Even artizans — carpenters, for instance, and smiths — are inferior »t the rate of four or three to one. On the other hand, there are men trained to particular branches of labour ■ — stone hewing and blasting was, we believe one of them — who are little, if any, inferior to the similar trained labourer at home. On the whole, the most gratifying statement was, that the native labourer is decidedly an im- ! provable animal — although we were sorry to hear that he has not yet even learned to wheel a barrow up a plank. We shall cease writing, for we are all called to dinner, and we shall certainly drink as our first and only toast to-night (for there is proof correcting to come after it) success to the engineers, contractors, and superintendents of works on railways, who are among the most valuable and the most needed of the instructors of the natives. This our native friends will understand, if they remember that the great evil of this country is the poverty of its people, and that the people are rich just in proportion as they work hard, and so as to produce large results by their labour. — Bombay Gazette.