Page:Gódávari.djvu/284

 BHADRACHALAM TALUK.

BHADRÁCHALAM taluk runs along the left bank of the Gódávari above the Gháts, by which it is cut off from the rest of the district. It is intersected by the Saveri, an important tributary joining the Gódávari at Kunnavaram. Owing to its position beyond the Gháts its climatic conditions are rather different from those of most of the district. The variations in temperature are greater, and the rainfall, which is almost all brought by the south-west monsoon, is 43'39 inches at Bhadráchalam, a high record for this district, and probably much greater in other parts of the taluk. The officer who drew up the working-plans for the Rékapalle forests inferred 'from an examination of the undergrowth and the general factors of that locality that 70 inches would be a closer estimate ' of the annual rainfall among them. The taluk is for the most part covered with low hills and forest. Some high hills rise to the west of the Saveri river adjoining the Gháts, and a smaller cluster stands some way from the Gódávari and to the east of the Saveri near Bódugúdem in the centre of the taluk. The whole of the taluk is malarious, especially the villages along and to the east of the Saveri river, but the scope for irrigation is considerable, and with more energetic ryots and a better land system cultivation might be largely extended.

Cholam is the staple crop of the country, though paddy and a little tobacco are grown along the river banks. The taluk appears to contain no indigenous industries whatever. The lace-work of the Dummagúdem mission is referred to in Chapter VI.

The taluk is of interest in several unusual directions. The curious Kóya people (see p. 60) make up a large proportion of its inhabitants; its revenue system, inherited from the Central Provinces administration, is in most respects (p. 174) unusual in this Presidency; coal has been mined for at Gauridévipéta (sixteen miles east of Bhadráchalam), albeit (p. 10) without much success, and plumbago has been worked at Pedakonda; garnets, rock-crystal, sapphires and gold are found; the country possesses many legendary associations with the story told in the Rámáyana of Rávana's stealing Síta, the wife of Ráma; and in it, from fifteen miles below Bhadráchalam