Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/157

 KHE 149 was 24:6, and no jail, small or large, in Oudh approached the minimum of mortality presented by Kheri. During the ten years ending 1868 the average jail mortality of the province was 85 ju the thousand, but in Kheri jail only 45. The above figures prove conclusively that when men are treated with the care and solicitude which the Oudh administration bestows upon its criminals, then Kheri, or a great part of it, is tolerably healthy, but that even freedom will not compensate for the bad food and clothing which the peasants of backward districts can alone procure. Perhaps it may be urged that 22 per thousand is, after all, no great mortality, and it is only an assumption that 50 per cent. should be added to that proportion; but another proof of the extreme sickliness of Kheri may be brought forward, and this is, that 937 in the thousand of the policemen there stationed were admitted into hospital during the year. Of course a man is not allowed to enter the hospital unless wholly unfit for work, and we can gather how widespread and unfailing must be the maladies which disable annually, for a longer or shorter period, almost every man in the police force, composed of healthy able-bodied men, well paid and well clothed. The provincial average of admissions into police hospitals was only 387 in the thousand, and this is perhaps a fairer, because a more accurate, statement than any other of the comparative unhealthiness of the district. The health of the district will, no doubt, improve with the extension of culti- vation, the clearing of the rank undergrowth, and the drainage of the jhíls. It has been questioned whether the latter months are, after all, so pre- judicial to health, but the sanitary officers are unanimous in the affirmative. It may be remarked that in 1871, 7,033 out of the 14,638 deaths in Kheri, or almost half, occurred during the three months of October, No- vember, and December, when the waters of the marshes and shallow ponds were being drained off by evaporation, and these months are almost equally fatal throughout the remainder of Oudh. In 1872, simi- larly, 9,423 deaths out of 21,912 occurred during the same three months. True, the actual area recorded as under water in Khe only 137 square miles, little more than 4 per cent of the whole; but this represents a very small proportion indeed of what is actually inundated during the rains, and the greater part of the three months in question. It is not un- common in Kheri during the rains to travel in large boats for four- teen or fifteen miles over land which is entered in the Government re- cords as high and dry. These transient waters were, of course, not in- cluded in the measurement; in fact they could not be, for when the sur- vey operations commenced a number of men were despatched into the district north of the Ul in October and November : all were seized with fever, and a large proportion died. Subsequent measurements were there- fore conducted after January, and the rain inundations, not being seen, were not enteredd. Nearly all these jhíls could be drained, as the Ul and Kauriála rivers flow far below their level, and it is hoped that they will be when canals or embankments supply other means of irrigation. Cattle-disease.-Connected with the subjects of hcalth and marsh malaria is that of cattle-disease. Kheri had not suffered severely from this plague 20