Page:Life or Death in India.djvu/16

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Life or Death in Calcutta.

lets on the other, carrying with it old sewage out of the subsoil. The main drainage of most of the town is complete, and native owners of houses are already applying for private drainage—a fact of great importance.

Still there remain to be provided for—to make the Sewerage perfect—connections between the main sewers and the houses (and especially in large districts of the poorer population, and in the Bustees—'temporary' villages, of mat and thatch and mud).

Many miles of ditches have been filled up, to the great detriment of mosquitoes and great comfort of the inhabitants.

Then, also, the sewage is being applied to agriculture.

And what has been the result of all this sanitary engineering?

From 1866, when the deaths from cholera in Calcutta were little short of 7,000, they have decreased to 800 in 1871, the lowest number of deaths on record. Calcutta in 1871 was more salubrious than Manchester or Liverpool, and may be considered soon a sanitarium compared with Vienna, or even with Berlin, where the city canals are still fouled with sewage.

Still we must not 'sing before we are out of the wood.' Much, as Mr. Clark and Sir George Campbell would tell us, remains to be done.

And before the inhabitants of Calcutta can hope to be free from finding themselves any morning in the claws of some epidemic disease, they must have done