1 218 A Short History of the Sikhs.
2 took as much as a half of the year's produce, besides
3 a multitude of cesses ; our demand never exceeds one-
4 sixth, is frequently less than an eighth, a tenth, or
5 a twelfth, and is in some cases not more than a
6 fifteenth of the average gross produce." * In spite of
7 these reductions, the new system soon began to yield
8 a bigger revenue than had ever flowed into the Sikh
9 exchequer.
10 The impetus thus given to trade and agriculture
11 was increased ten-fold by the making of roads, rail-
12 ways, and irrigation canals. At the time of the
13 annexation there was no railway, nor was there
14 a yard of metalled road in the Punjab. The first
15 line of rail was built in 1859 from Amritsar to
16 Miiltan. Twenty years later there were more than
17 1,000 miles of line open, and to-day there are more
18 than 6,000. In addition metalled roads traverse the
19 province in every direction, with a total length ex-
20 ceeding 3,000 miles. Irrigation works were carried
21 out on an even more extensive scale. Such canals
22 as existed in the days of the Sikh monarchy were
23 few in number and ill-maintained. They were still
24 further neglected during the anarchy which followed
25 the death of Ranjit Singh, and when the province
26 was taken over they were in a state of ruin. During
27 his rule in the Punjab, John Lawrence spent £880,000
28 on canals. At the present time, of the 30,000,000
29 acres of land under cultivation, 10,000,000 acres owe
30 their fertility to artificial irrigation, 760,000 being
31 watered by the Bari Doab Canal2 alone. The
32 1 Census Report for the Punjab for 1881.
33 2 Opened in 1859.