Report of a committee on a plan for cleansing the drains of Black Town.

Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of a committee on a plan for cleansing the drains of Black Town. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    95/105 (page 87)
    This vast traffic on an imperfect common road, without moans for continu- ous transit, so that both goods and travellers must proceed by daily stages of from 15 to 25 miles, shows how enormous it would be if the cost and time were reduced to -J^th, as it would be by a steam canal. Leaving out G5 days of the year for diminished traffic during the monsoon, the cost of this traffic may be thus calculated ; 1000 loaded bandies X 300 at 1 Anna Rs. 18,750 68 passenger bandies x 300 at 1£ Anna „ 1,275 150 loaded bullocks X 300 at 2 Pice „ 470 3000 foot passengers X 300 at 1£ Pice „ 6,800 Total cost per mile per annum...Rs. 27,295 In this estimate I allow for less than fd of the bandies being loaded. T calculate the expense of the foot travellers at li Pice a mile, or 2£ Annas a day as the average value of their time, supposing they walk 20 miles a day. We have thus the extraordinary sum of 27,000 Us. a year spent in traffic on every mile of this road, and hence if a canal could be worked at 2 Pice a ton per mile, or £th Pice per bandy load, ^th ot the cost by an imperfect road, (of which there can.be no doubt from the rate of 3 Pice on Cochrane's canal in its present imperfect state,) there would be a saving of 25,000 Rupees a mile, or on the 20 miles from the head of the Palaveram basin to the centre of Madras 5 Lacks a year, the Interest at 10 per cent, of 50 Lacks. This will give some idea of the enormous waste of mouey in Madras and its neighbourhood from want of cheap means of transit. If there are 3000 foot travellers a day 11 miles from Madras, what must there be in Madras itself ? and what would there be if instead of walking at 3 miles an hour and at a cost of 1^ Pice a mile, they could be conveyed in steamers at J Pice a mile, and at 8 miles an hour. APPENDIX. IT. MEMORANDUM ON THE ADYAR BASIN, BY LIEUTENANT COLONEL A. T. COTTON, CHIEF ENGINEER, DATED MADRAS, APRIL 22d, 1852. The basiu of the Adyar extends in a S. W. direction inland from St. Thome, the S. W. extremity being about 25 miles from that village. Its breadth gradually increases from li miles where the southern coast road crosses it to about 6 miles near Pecrungallatoor, which is 15a miles jn a direct line from St. Thome—immediately after this it increases more rapidly up to 21 milea at the south western extremity of the basin.