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Towns and villages—Grove Area of townships—Origin of villages—Area under crops —Irrigated land—Culturable land—Uncultivated lands—Goind lands—Rents—Additional cesaes—Indebtedness of cultivator and his social position—Harvests, the rebi, kherif, and henwat crops—Outturn—Irrigation—Government advance for irrigation improvements—Prices—Scarcities and famines—Food—Fish—Wages—Weights and measures Principal bazars—Markets—Manufactures—Trades—Communications—Roads—Railways Carriage.

Towns and villages.—Exclusive of the city of Lucknow there are no great towns. The only others with a population of more than 5,000 are Amethi, Kákori, and Malihabad: Bijnaur, Kasmandi, Mahona, and Mariáon are qasbas, but wanting only in population. The qasbas are almost universally the headquarters of parganas, and from then the pargana used to be administered under the native rule. Here is an account of the origin, and a description of a qasba town,"A Musalman settlement in a defensible military position, generally on the site of ancient Hindu headquarters, town, or fort, where, for mutual protection, the Musalmans, who had overrun and seized the proprietary of the surrounding villages, resided; where the faujdár and his troops, the pargana qanungo and chaudhri, the mufti, qázi, and other high dignitaries lived; and, as must be the case where the wealth and power of the Moslem sect was collected in one spot, a large settlement of Sayyads' mosques, dargáhs, &c., sprang up As a rule there was little land attached, and that was chiefly planted with fruit groves, and held free of rent, whilst each man really had a free hold of the yard of his house and the land occupied by his servants and followers." (From Mr. Capper's judgment in the Amethi case.) The larger towns are generally the resort of the Musalman gentry, as well as the lower caste members of the creed, who follow the mechanical professions. With the exception of such towns the district is chiefly rural.

Including Lucknow, the urban population amounts to 32-5 per cent. of the whole, nevertheless there are numerous large villages containing a population of from 1,000 to 2,000 and from 2,000 to 5,000 inhabitants; the population of the city is understood to be slowly declining. The following figures will show the entire number of towns and villages in the district classified:—

There are—

And there is moreover no large village without its dependent hamlets. Their entire number is 988 (in the old district), but they do not belong to the smaller villages, and not so much to the pargana towns as to the large villages. Eliminating the former and the city of Lucknow, eleven in all, and taking only half of the villages with a population of over 200, the