Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/288

272 impossible to weigh their relative power and influence in. nice or golden scales, nor can we always compel them &quot; parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.&quot; But the recog nition of certain mutual obligations and principles of public law is the fundamental condition of civilisation itself. Nothing can be more injurious to society than that the states of Europe should exist without alliances, without mutual confidence, without a common system based on the principles of justice and of peace, the weak living in dread of the strong, the strong armed to the teeth against each other. We trust that before another great catastrophe arises from this state of disguised hostility, a truer balance of power may be established by a return to sounder prin ciples ; for peace can never be secure unless it is protected by the concurrence of the leading nations of the world, and by their determination to oppose a combined resistance to those who have no object but their own aggrandisement and ambition. (H. K.)  BALASOR, a district of British India in the Orissa division, under the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, lies between 20 and 21 1ST. lat., and in 86 and 87 E. long., and is -bounded on the 1ST. by the district of Midnapur ; on the S. by Cattack district, from which it is separated by the Baitarani river ; on the W. by the tributary states of Keun- jhar, Nilgiri, and Morbhanj ; and on the E. by the Bay of Bengal. Balasor district forms a strip of alluvial land between the hills and the sea, varying from about 9 to 34 miles in breadth; area, 2066 sq. miles. The hill country rises from the western boundary line. The district natu rally divides itself into three well-defined tracts (1.) The Salt Tract, along the coast ; (2.) The Arable Tract, or rice country; and (3.) The Submontane Tract, or jungle lands. The Salt Tract runs the whole way down the coast, and forms a desolate strip a few miles broad. Towards the beach it rises into sandy ridges, from 50 to 80 feet high, sloping inland, and covered with a vegetation of low scrub jungle. Sluggish brackish streams creep along between banks of foetid black mud. The sand hills on the verge of the ocean are carpeted with creepers and the wild convol vulus. Inland, it spreads out into prairies of coarse long grass and scrub jungle, which harbour wild animals in plenty ; but throughout this vast region there is scarcely a hamlet, and only patches of rice cultivation at long inter vals. From any part of the Salt Tract one may see the boundary of the inner arable part of the district, fringed with long lines of trees, from which every morning the villagers drive their cattle out into the saliferous plains to graze. The Salt Tract is purely alluvial, and appears to be of recent date. Towards the coast the soil has a distinctly saline taste. Salt is largely manufactured in this tract by evaporation. The following is the process followed : At the beginning of December the contractor selects his locality, about a quarter to half a mile from the sea, and engages a class of men called chuliyds, or heads of salt gangs. These men receive Is. a cwt. for whatever amount of salt they turn out. They, in their turn, engage working parties of malangis, who are paid at the rate of 3d. to 5d. a day. The ground is first marked out by a shallow trench, and the grasses and bushes are carefully dug up and removed. A deep ditch is next dug from the sea, by means of which, twice a month, the spring tides overflow the salt- field, and fill a number of reservoirs, 4 feet in diameter, and 2 or 3 feet deep. A mound of earth is then piled up to the height of 2 feet, and from 3 to 4 in diameter. It is next hollowed out into the shape of a bowl, plastered inside with clay, and furnished with a hole at the bottom, covered with a layer of grass 6 inches thick. The salt-makers fill this bowl with saline earth scraped off the adjacent land, and pour the sea-water on it from the top. By the end oi six hours the water has drained through into a pit at the bottom, and runs down a thatched trench towards a reser voir, whence it is transferred to the evaporators. The latter consist of from 160 to 200 little unglazed earthenware pots, fastened together by stiff tenacious mud, and holding two quarts each. The neighbouring plains supply grasses for the fuel. Six hours boiling completes the process. The brine, which consisted in the first place of sea-water charged to its maximum power of solution by percolating through the bowls of salt earth, subsides into dirty crystals at the bottom of the pots. It is then ladled out in spoons made of half cocoa-nuts. The whole process is as rude and careless as can well be imagined. The total cost of manufacture is estimated at 2s. Id. a cwt., which with the Government duty of 8s. 8d., makes a total cost of 10s. 9d.

The Arable Tract lies beyond the salt lands, and embraces the chief part of the district. It is a long dead level of rich fields, with a soil lighter in colour than that of Bengal or Behar ; much more friable, and apt to split up into small cubes with a rectangular cleavage. A peculiar feature of the Arable Tract is the Pats, literally the Cups, or depressed lands near the river banks. They were probably marshes that have partially silted up by the yearly overflow of the streams. These Cup-lands bear the finest crops. As a whole, the Arable Tract is a treeless region, except around the villages, which are encircled by fine mango, pipal, banyan, and tamarind trees, and intersected with green shady lanes of bamboo. A few palmyras, date palms, and screw pines (a sort of aloe, whose leaves are armed with formidable triple rows of hook-shaped thorns) dot the expanse, or run in straight lines between the fields. The Submontane Tract is an undulating country with a red soil, much broken up into ravines along the foot of the hills. Masses of laterite, buried in hard ferruginous clay, crop up as rocks or slabs. At Kopari, in Kila Ambohatd, about 2 square miles are almost paved with such slabs, dark red in colour, perfectly flat, and polished like plates of iron. A thousand mountain torrents have scooped out for themselves picturesque ravines, clothed with an ever-fresh verdure of prickly thorns, stunted gnarled shrubs, and here and there a noble forest tree. Large tracts are covered with Sdl jungle, which nowhere, however, attains to any great height.

