When About
To Leave Roorkee, He Devoted This Accumulation Of Self-Imposed Fines To
The Erection Of A Sun-Dial, To Teach The Natives The Value Of Time.
The
late Sir James Caird, who told this legend of Roorkee as he heard it there
in 1880, used to add, with a humorous twinkle of his kindly eyes, "It was
a very handsome dial."[33]
From September, 1845, to March, 1847, Yule was much occupied
intermittently, in addition to his professional work, by service on a
Committee appointed by Government "to investigate the causes of the
unhealthiness which has existed at Kurnal, and other portions of the
country along the line of the Delhi Canal," and further, to report
"whether an injurious effect on the health of the people of the Doab is,
or is not, likely to be produced by the contemplated Ganges Canal."
"A very elaborate investigation was made by the Committee, directed
principally to ascertaining what relation subsisted between certain
physical conditions of the different districts, and the liability of their
inhabitants to miasmatic fevers." The principal conclusion of the
Committee was, "that in the extensive epidemic of 1843, when Kurnaul
suffered so seriously ... the greater part of the evils observed had not
been the necessary and unavoidable results of canal irrigation, but were
due to interference with the natural drainage of the country, to the
saturation of stiff and retentive soils, and to natural disadvantages of
site, enhanced by excess of moisture. As regarded the Ganges Canal, they
were of opinion that, with due attention to drainage, improvement rather
than injury to the general health might be expected to follow the
introduction of canal irrigation."[34] In an unpublished note written
about 1889, Yule records his ultimate opinion as follows:
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