Proby Cautley

Sir Proby Thomas Cautley KCB (1802 - January 25, 1871), English engineer and palaeontologist, born in Suffolk, is best known for conceiving and building the Ganga canal in India, which starts at Haridwar.

Proby Cautley came to India during the British Raj at the age of 17 and joined the Bengal artillery in 1819. In 1825, he assisted Captain Robert Smith, the engineer in charge of constructing the Eastern Yamuna canal, also called the Doab canal. He was made in charge of this canal for 12 years between 1831 and 1843. By 1836, he was Superintendent-General of Canals.

Ganga canal

In 1840 Cautley reported on the proposed Ganga canal, for the irrigation of the country between the rivers Ganga, Hindan and Yamuna- then called the Jumna, which was his most important work.

Cautley began working towards his dream of building a Ganga canal, and spent six months walking and riding through the area taking each measurement himself. He was confident that a 500-kilometre canal was feasible. There were many obstacles and objections to his project, mostly financial, but Cautley persevered and eventually persuaded the British East India Company to back him. This project was sanctioned in 1841, but the work was not begun till 1843, and even then Cautley found himself hampered in its execution by the opposition of Lord Ellenborough.

Digging of the canal began in April 1842 [ [http://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/gazetteer/pager.html?objectid=DS405.1.I34_V12_144.gifUpper Ganges Canal] The Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 12, p. 138.] . Cautley had to make his own bricks, brick kiln and mortar. Initially, he was opposed by the Hindu priests at Haridwar, who felt that the waters of the holy river Ganga would be imprisoned but Cautley pacified them by agreeing to leave a gap in the dam from where the water could flow unchecked. He further appeased the priests by undertaking the repair of bathing ghats along the river. He also inaugurated the dam by the worship of Lord Ganesh, the god of good beginnings.

The dam was faced with many complications- among them was the problem of the mountainous streams that threatened the canal. Near Roorkee, the land fell away sharply and Cautley had to build an aqueduct to carry the canal for half a kilometre. As a result, at Roorkee the canal is 25 metres higher than the original river.

From 1845 to 1848 he was absent in England owing to ill-health, and on his return to India he was appointed director of canals in the North-Western Provinces.

When the canal formally opened on 8 April 1854, its main channel was convert|348|mi|km long, its branches convert|306|mi|km long and the various tributaries over convert|3000|mi|km long. Over convert|767000|acre|km2|-1 in 5,000 villages were irrigated.

One of the seven Hostels of IIT Roorkee is named after him.

Fossil work

Cautley was actively involved in Dr. Hugh Falconer's fossil expeditions in the Siwalik Hills. He presented a large collection of fossil mammalia- among them a hippopotamus and crocodile fossils indicating that the area was once a swampland. Other animal remains that he found here included the sabre-toothed tiger, "Elephis ganesa"- an elephant with a trunk length of about 10 and a half feet, the bones of a fossil ostrich and the remains of giant cranes and tortoises.

He also contributed numerous memoirs, some written in collaboration with Dr Hugh Falconer, to the Proceedings of the Bengal Asiatic Society and the Geological Society of London on the geology and fossil remains of the Sivalik Hills.

Writings

Cautley's writings indicated his large and varied interests. He wrote on a submerged city, twenty feet underground, in the Doab: on the coal and lignite in the Himalayas; on gold washings in the Siwaliks, between the Sutlej and the Yamuna; on a new species of snake; on the mastodons of the Siwaliks and on the manufacture of tar.

In 1860 he published a full account of the making of the Ganga canal.

Death

After the Ganga canal was opened in 1854 he went back to England, where he was made KCB, and from 1858 to 1868 he occupied a seat on the council of India. He died at Sydenham, near London, on the 25 January 1871.

Notes

References

*
* "Roads to Mussoorie" by Ruskin Bond
*1911