Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/123

 KAT 115 being carried away, or the top-dressing of manure he lays down being wash- ed off or covered with a coat of silt. Where the floods do not terrify him the land is highly improvable, and gives a large return to the class of men who carry out the fertile culture in its extremest development, and can busy themselves all day about a few square yards of land. Hence a large nun- ber of Kachhis have settled here, and they carry out their peculiar system, of cultivation with great success, occupy very small areas, manure and water them thoroughly, and turn out really wonderful crops of opium and market vegetables which they carry for sale to Farukhabad. The other principal class of cultivators, Rajputs and Brahmans, act on the opposite principle. Having no use to make of their bullocks in irrigation, they use them to plough a larger quantity of land (the theoretical plough area being eight acres here against five acres in the bángar or highland of the duab), ma- pure little, irrigate little, but make up for inferior style of cultivation by a larger area of occupancy. There is no land really unculturable in this tract except the river beds; there is no "oosar" or land so impregnated with salt as to produce no vegetation ; but there is much land extremely sandy and almost valueless, and a little in which there is saline effiorescence enough not to kill the crops and grass altogether, but to make the land very bare and poor, so that even under the stimulus of the present high prices (1870) it has remained uncultivated. Nothing is wanted for this land but water and manure." (Revenue Reporter, Vol., IV., No. II., p. 51.) Like these Farukhabad parganas Katiári is intersected by streams and channels which in food time connect the Ganges and Rámganga. Its fertility is due to the nearness of the water to the surface and to the deposit of rich loam ("seo') brought down by the rivers. The deposit of the Rámganga is the most fertilising. In heavy floods the deposit of “seo' is often eight fingers thick, sometimes as much as two foct. In such seasons a bumper rabi compensates for a ruined kharíf. Very little labour is required for preparing the 'seo' to receive the seed, one-fourth only the cultivators rockon, of the average to it expended elsewhere. The pargana abounds in a rich growth of grass of various kinds. The chaupatia” springs up freely in January and February, and is much es- teemed by the graziers for the quantity of milk yielded by kine pastured on it. The " patawar” abounds,—so valuable for thatching, rope-making, and cane furniture. But the baneful“ surai" is also very prevalent along the Rámganga and Ganges, a rank deep-rooted woed most difficult to extirpate. Mr. Elliott writes of it:-" It is greatly complained of, and is said to have in- creased much of late. In many places there is at least as much 'surai' as wheat in the wheat fields, and its roots are so deep that it is quite beyond the power of an ordinary cultivator to extirpate it; and if he did, the next flood of the Ganges would leave fresh seeds of it in the ground. If it does really increase, it will soon be as great an enemy to the agriculturists as the kans' of the trans-Jumna." The staple products are wheat, barley, bájra, and juár. At survey wheat and barley cropped nearly half the cultivated area, and bájra and juár nearly a third." The areas returned as under sugarcane, cotton, opium,