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295

exceedingly unhealthy. This forest was appropriated by Government at annexation, and has been demarcated into eighteen grants of these three are held under the lease rules and four have been purchased in fee simple. The other 11 are held as nazul lands by the Deputy Commissioner, and all of them will probably eventually be made over to the Forest Department. The forest itself is really of much greater extent than the area of these eighteen grants, as it stretches for a considerable distance into the

districts of

Shahjahanpur and

Pilibhit,

and

also

some portions of

it

have

here and there been demarcated within the neighbouring mauzas.

There is a tradition wide-spread and generally believed all over Bhtir pargana that there was a time when populous villages flourished and crops of grain waved all over the extensive la.nds now covered by these forests. I am inclined to credit this tradition, but am quite unable to hazard an opinion as to the age of the forest. I have been told vaguely in many But all along the edge places that the trees were above 200 years old. of the forest there are found remains of the deserted villages or " dihs," and in the most remote spots within the forests herdsmen occasionally come upon remains of masonry wells, and here and there the earth near the well has been dug up, and the faith and labour of the digger have been rewarded by the discovery of coins and brass implements and rusty weapons.

What are called the " jaur" form a peculiar feature of the upper country I believe the word in pargana Bhur, as the bhagghars do of the ganjar. "jaur" is local ; a jaur may be defined as a long and narrow depression of the soU, forming, after a heavy fall of rain, a string of marshes connected with each other and having perhaps 2 feet of water, beneath which there is black mud of a depth of about 18 inches. These jaurs are cultivated with rice,

and are generally entered

in the settlement records as fields

and not

as jhils.

Aliganj plain is drained by two jaurs, the Kursoi, which flows into and the Kathna, which goes ijito pargana Srinagar, and after becoming a flowing stream eventually joins the Kandwa.

The

the

TJl,

villages along the high ridge are drained by the which flows into the Barauncha under Bijwa; the Junai itself is hardly more than a jaur in places, and there are one or two other nameless jaurs which are connected with the Junai.

The trans-Barauncha

Kulwari

jaur,

There

is»a

great

difference

between the upper and lower country in

The general aspect of the landscape in these low ganjar plains is by no means picturesque. It used to remind me of the fen country round about Cambridge and Ely, whiph is known to have formed The lower flat at some remote period an estuary of the German Ocean. -plain is devoid of the noble groves which generally give so much beauty and variety to a landscape in Northern India or if here and there groves of a few mango trees be found, they are small and stunted, and their trunks

Bhur

pargana.



are covered with a .white coating of silt and mud left by the floods, adhering to the trunk to a height of 4 or 6 feet from the ground, and -spoiling the beauty of the trees.