Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/193

 KHE 185 sers. undoubtedly bu famine. In January, 1874, the cheapest grain reached 18 As in other districts, the periods in which famine is most to be ap- prehended are the two months before the rabi harvest is cut, January and February, and the two months before the kharif harvest ripens, July and August. There is perhaps less danger of famine in Kheri than in the adjoining district, Bahraich, because the sugarcane crop ip January, which is an exceptionally large one, mitigates the former scarcity, and the carly half-ripe Indian-cora or makái in August is used by those who have nothing left from their rabi harvest. These famines have all been caused by droughts. The rainfall in parts of Kheri is far more capricious than the returns show, which all are made out from statistics furnished from the “ úpar- hár" or cis-Ul portion of the district, which is not more than half. In the upper or tarái half the rainfall is, although unregistered, still un- doubtedly much more irregular. In 1873, for instance, according to all accounts, there were no regular rains whatever in the trans-Ul portion of the district, and the rice crop was in most places a failure. In Kheri itself the rains, though inferior to the average, were still 29 inches, while they can hardly have exceeded 10 in the parganas of Khairigarh, Nighá- san, Dhaurahra, and Bbúr. The rice crop therefore in 1873 was a failure, as in the adjoining districts; that there was not extensive suffering as in Bahraich and Gonda seems due to several reasons. First, that the people in these parganas were better off, and particularly in Khairigarh, as elsewhere remarked, they had large stores of jewellery. Khairigarh and Dhaurabra had both been mainly under European management, either of the Court of Wards or of European taluqdars, owing to which for some years rents had been low, and savings accumulated. Second, the Oudh Forest Department and their contractors afforded work to large gangs of coolies. Third, the population was largely a grazing, and only partially an agricultural one. There can be no question about the scarcity of grain. I myself examine villages in which it was evident from the appearance of their fields, as from the cultivators' statements, that not one stalk of rice had been cut, and the rabi crop was almost equally a failure. Further, at the Chaukaghat, in April, the carts of the Bhár (trans-Ul) taluqdars were transporting wheat which their owners had bought in the Lakhimpur markets for the supply of their households, as their own crop had been a total failure. The rabi harvest, however, in the southern half of the district was good ; population in the northern was sparse,-under 200 to the square mile; it had savings, so the failure of the crops for one season was of no consequence. Remedies—irrigation, drainage, windmills.—They need not have failed at all if there had been any means of raising water from the numerous rivers, the Kauriala, the Chauka, the Daháwar, and the Suheli, Two- thirds of the land in which the rice crop failed were not twenty feet above the level of ample supplies of the water which would have saved them. The people are not accustomed to irrigate, and indeed they are so weak- ened by fever that hard labour at the wells would be impossible for many during the rains. Moreover excessive rain is more common than drought; the former may at any time succeed the latter, in which case land which had been irrigated mighi suffer more than what had been left