Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/122

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114

The area is 90 square miles, of is sixteen and breadth nine miles. 20-96 which 61 are cultivated, or 67-45 per cent. The culturable area is 8-04 is per cent, Only 10-91 whole. of the per cent., and the barren area

length

rated as third class. Not quite a sixth (15-94 per cent.) is artificially irriOf the irrigated area gated, owing to the extreme moisture of the soil. and rather less wells, from 1,117 watered is half (8-85) rather more than than half (17-09) frora 352 tanks and ponds. The grove area (-68 per cent.) is exceptionally low. The average area of cultivation to each plough, 12| acres, is exceptionally high.

The natural features of the pargana explain this. Mr. Elliott's description of the adjacent parganas of Khakhatmau and Paramnagar in Farukhabad may be quoted as equally applicable to Katiari

entirely tardi or lowlands. No part of it is the level of the river-floods. Much of it is covered with water for two or three days together, when the rains are heavy and the rivers high, and this water often leaves a deposit of sand behind. Some of the land is subject to constant erosion by the rivers, and the assessment of many villages is constantly varying with the varying area, as the rivers devour or cast up the culturable land." After mentioning the various channels which connect the Ganges and Ramganga, Mr. Elliott says: "Besides these channels there are several 'sotas,' i. e., backwaters or side channels which run nearly parallel to their own rivers for a short way, or curve round and run The Ganges, as becomes its great age, keeps sedately into them again. within its bed, and only rolls wearily from one side to another ; but the Kamganga is a gambolling vagabond and wanders at his own sweet will over many miles of country, carving out beds capriciously for himself, and leaving them as iUogically. The most important effect of this contiguity to a complicated river-system is that the water is everywhere close to the Irrigation by buckets worked by bullocks is unknown. The wells surface. are all of the kind called chiihas,' little pits in the ground, 8 or 10 feet deep, dug in one or two days the sides of the well axe strengthened by a bir,' or rope of cotton and jhao stalks bound together, and wound round the well for a depth of three or four feet, beginning from the place where water begins to trickle. The depth of water is never more than three it percolates slowly and is soon exhausted, and the well or four feet has constantly to be cleaned of the sand which oozes in with it. Irrigation is effected by an earthen pot worked with a weighted lener, and slow as the work of exhaustion is, there are few chuhas ' which can be worked "continuously the whole day, and the area irrigated is seldom more than two biswas. At this rate it takes about a month to irrigate an acre, and a cultivator can only water about two acres a year. These wells fall in every year and leave hardly any trace behind. They can be dug almost everywhere, but there are many tracts in which the soil is too loose to dig them without sloping the sides of the pit at a considerable angle, and very large tracts of land are so naturally moist that they haxdly need them at all, except for the higher class of crops like opium. From this set of causes two classes of effects arise. Where the land is in danger of dily,vion, and where it is swept over by water at high-flood times, the cultivator will not improve at all, because he is in constant danger of the land he works on "

The trans-Gangetic tract is

much above

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