Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/23

 CHAPTER

U.

The extraordinary fertility of the soil, and a climate which reduces to a minimum the necessity of artificial subventions to human life, have called into existence a population of extreme density, and directed its energies almost exclusively to agricultural pursuits. The explored world not only shows no other equal area so thickly peopled, but nowhere also in at all comparable cases is there such an entire absence of large cities and of the arts and manufactures which contribute to the support of mankind. Oudh with its 23,930 square miles has 11,17'4,287 inhabitants, or an average over the whole area of 476 to the square mile. Belgium, the most populous country in Europe, and England, whose teeming multitudes spread all. over the world in search of a living which they cannot find in the narrow limits of their own not unfertile home, have averages of 400 and 344 souls to the square mile, and these figures are swollen by the populations of crowded centres of trade and industry where the principal means of subsistence are procured from abroad. In the whole of Oudh ther« Fyzabad, no town of even with exceptions of and is, the Lucknow denser crowds provided with moderate size, and not only are far live, but they are comwhich they food entirely from the soil on procure the other necessaries pelled to export food elsewhere to of

life.

Of the

eighteen towns in the province with a population of over 10,000, one only, Tanda, owed its prosperity to manufactures, a prosperity which was called into existence less than a hundred years ago by the enterprise of a Scotch immigrant, and of which now it may be said that hardly a trace has survived the competition of machine-made fabrics with the excellent but more expenOf the remainder, sive cotton cloths of its industrious artizans. Bilgrdm, Eudauli, Bahraich, Shahabad, Khairabad, Sandlla, of the colonies military Jais, Sandi, and Zaidpur were originally [foundtheir of power Muhammadans, and share the decay of the ers ; Balrdmpur, Gonda, Laharpur, Purwa, and Mallanwan were centres where small numbers of grain and money dealers collected under the protecting fort of a Hindu chieftain, while Fyzabad and Lucknow sprang up round the court which selected them successively for its residence.