Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/495

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1769-70 did not extend to Oudh, food reached double its ordinary price, owing to the large exportation of grain. A hundred years ago, exporters of grain by land carriage must have encountered very many risks, but the Gogra, a very broad river, must have afforded, as it does at the present day, considerable facilities for exportation.

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Second. The scarcity of 1784-85 rose to a famine in the eastern parts of the division. The Fyzabad district and the Utraula pargana of the Gonda district suffered very severely. In Fyzaba,d the autumn rice and the cold-weather juar crops were lost from the lateness of the autumn The spring crops sown in October 1785 were irrigated from wells rainfall. with great difficulty. There is a great deal of jhil irrigation in the district, and the jhils were, of course, dried up while in January and February 1786 the spring crops were ruined by excessive rain. The result was a terrible famine, the consequences of which must have been felt in succeeding years, as no grain was available for seed. The people subsisted on grass, or rather on the seed of jungle grass and the bark of trees, while many small estates were deserted. In the Utraula pargana of zila Gonda the famine was very grievous the mortality from want of food was very great children were sold, and large numbers left their homes the people lived on jungle Gram sold at 8 sers for the rupee at berries and the seed of jungle grass. Fyzabad. Further west there was no famine. The rabi harvest was good. In Gonda the price of grain rose to 15 sers per rupee, but the tahsildar of Tarabganj* reports that the scarcity did not extend to 'that part of the country as far as he has been able to discover. In Bahraich, which lies north-west of Fyzabad and west of Gonda, wheat rose in price to 12 sers, and in Hisampur, in the same district, to 15 sers per rupee, the prices inordinary years ranging from 1 to 1^ maunds per rupee.







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Third. In Fyzabad in 1837 there was no famine, though food reached two or three times its ordinary price, the result of large exportations of It is a curious fact that a large quantity of grain was carried back grain. to Oudh by traders who imported grain from that province, after the famine-stricken districts of the North- Western Provinces had been supplied from the more eastern districts and Bengal. The famine in the ISforthWestem Provinces did not extend, I believe, east of Allahabad, or even of Fatehpur. In the Gonda district there was a scarcity of grain for three or four months in 1837, owing apparently to a partial failure in the rains. No scarcity was felt in 1860-61. In Bahraich the spring crop of 1837 failed, and there was some distress till the kharif harvest, which was abxmdant. Wheat sold at 12 sers for the rupee, maize and barley at 13. There was a large immigration into Oudh from the North- Western ProThe deputy commissioner does not refer to the state of things in vinces. 1860-61. I believe the harvests were good, but, owing to exportation, wheat, sold at 10 sers for the rupee. Fleets of boats might be seen daily •for a certain portion of the year conveying grain down the Gogra to the eastward. In 1866 wheat rose to 10 sers the rupee in Bahraich, and remained at that rate for some months- There was large exportation to Bengal. In January 1874 wheat rose to 13 sers for the rupee, maize to gram to 15, kodo to 20, rice to 12, in Bahraich. In Gonda prices were 16,



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