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 — BAB

87

by tbe North-Western Provinces district of Basti, and on the west is coterminous with pargana Nawabganj. In shape it is a long, narrow strip running east and west, and broadening in the centre, with a greatest length of seventeen and a greatest breadth of seven miles. The eastern half of its northern frontier is washed by the river Bisuhi, which is separated from the cultivated tracts by a narrow belt of jungle. The rest of the pargana is densely populated and under minute and careful tillage. The whole is a perfectly level, slightly raised plain, with no distinctive natural features beyond a number of small lakes which accumulate the water of the rains. Irrigation is very general, and water found within from 10 to 20 feet of the surface. 6,700 acres are irrigated from wells, of which 737 are of brick; while 492 tanks and ponds water 5,415 acres, giving a total irrigated area of 12,115 acres, or nearly half of the whole cultivation.



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The pargana may be divided into two distinct tracts―the jungle belt which has been apportioned between six Government grantees, and the old cultivated villages on which land revenue has been assessed. The latter number 135, with a total area of 36,647 acres, of which 24,924 or 69 per cent., are under cultivation; while the grants cover 6,327 acres, of which only 2,017, or 32 per cent., having been brought under the plough, the total proportion of cultivation to non-cultivation being G24 per cent, over the whole pargana. The land is all of a good dumat, or mixture of clay and sand, never rising to pure clay, or so sandy as to be incapable of tillage 18,865 acres are under autumn and 18,655 under spring crops, while 11,535 acres bear two harvests in the year.



The principal agricultural products are autumn rice and wheat, and the areas under each of the main crops are shewn in the following table

Autumn

rice.