1 Annexation— and After. 221
2 Government did not maintain a single school, a few
3 Muhammadan teachers scattered through the larger
4 towns providing the only instruction available, and
5 that of the most primitive description. The founda-
6 tions of the present Department of Public Instruction
7 were laid in 1854. The people were quick to take
8 advantage of the opportunities placed before them,
9 and during the ten succeeding years elementary
10 schools were opened in every district, and in 1864
11 the Government colleges at Delhi and Lahore were
12 established. In 1882, when the Punjab University
13 was founded, over 200,000 pupils were receiving
14 instruction.
15 This is not the place to enter upon a detailed
16 account of the measures adopted for the consolidation
17 of the Punjab. Enough has been said to give some
18 idea of the progress of the province under British
19 rule, and that for our present purpose must suffice.
20 How as time went on the resources of the country
21 were developed, how commerce leapt into being, how
22 the postal and telegraph services carried the message
23 of civilization to the remotest villages, how with the
24 establishment of peace and good government wages
25 rose and crime decreased, how the coinage was re-
26 fined, how hospitals were opened for the sick, how
27 public buildings were erected, forests conserved, wells
28 sunk, and rivers bridged — all these are matters be-
29 longing to the history, not of the Sikhs, but of the
30 British Empire in India. For the full story of the
31 Punjab since 1849 — the story of one of the greatest
32 administrative achievements of modern times — the
33 reader cannot do better than study the Administra-