Nuniz states that the successor of Harihara II. greatly improved the
city of Vijayanagar, raising fresh walls and towers, increasing its
extent, and building further lines of fortification. But his great
work was the construction of a huge dam in the Tungabhadra river,
and the formation of an aqueduct fifteen miles long from the river
into the city. If this be the same channel that to the present day
supplies the fields which occupy so much of the site of the old city,
it is a most extraordinary work. For several miles this channel is
cut out of the solid rock at the base of the hills, and is one of the
most remarkable irrigation works to be seen in India. No details are
given of the wars he engaged in, except that, besides his campaigns
against the Moors, he took "Goa, Chaul, and Dabull," and reduced the
Choromandel side of the peninsula to loyalty and obedience to his rule.

We learn a great deal more about the doings of Bukka II. and Deva
Raya I. from Firishtah than from Nuniz, and I make no apology for
quoting copiously from the former author, whose writings throw much
light on the period.

Bukka's first war began with the invasion already alluded to. It took
place during his father Harihara's reign, apparently about the month
of December A.D. 1398 (rather later than earlier). The wide cotton
plains of that tract are only passable during prolonged dry weather,
and the prince would certainly not have risked an advance while there
was any likelihood of rain falling. Bukka's son accompanied his father,
and the objective was the country of the Doab, and particularly the
fortresses of Mudkal and Raichur, then in the hands of the Bahmani
Sultan. Sultan Firuz moved to meet him, slaughtering on the way a
Hindu chief or zamindar and seven or eight thousand of his followers,
"who had always been very troublesome and refractory." The Raya