Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/22

 14 NAIV to be tolerably safe from the rain floods, on the boundary of the villages of Agampur and Tathia ; and, from the small beginning thus made, has grown the largest grain market in the district, and perhaps in the whole of Oudh. During the interval of English rule (1802-1816 A.D.), two new quarters were added to the infant bazar, but up to annexation it was never of sufficient importance to be the seat of a government official, and it is since the mutiny that the ten new quarters of Goláganj, Pakka Darwáza, Chái Tola, Lonia Tola, Teliáni Tola, Púra Rám Sahảe, Pura Koriána, Juláha Tola, Thatherái Tola, and Bazzaz Tola, have sprung up round the old muháls of Nawabganj, Motiganj, and Sanichari bazar. The present town con- tains 6,131 inhabitants and 1,273 mud-built houses. The religion of the people is reflected in the distribution of their places of Worship, of which 22 are dedicated to Mahadeo, while three are mosquea. It contains one small and very dirty sarse for the accommodation of travellers ; and a school, attended by 106 boys, contends without any striking success against the indifference of the local traders to any learning beyond the art of writing their unintelligible business characters. In plan 'it is a long street, with shops and dwelling-houses on each side, in front of which are piled heaps of grain to attract the attention of dealers. To the north the street broadens on to a good-sized plain, which is bordered here and there by substantial sheds for the storage of merchandize, and serves as a stand- ing place for the innumerable carts, which bring down the produce of the Tarái. The principal export is the rice of Tulsipur, Utraula, and the north- west portions of the Basti district, and during the end of the cold weather the infamous road from Utraula, which forms the only channel for this trade, is blocked by strings of carts, often numbering over a hundred in a single line. Besides rice the Tarái contributes large quantities of oil seeds, and the more southern parts of the district their wheat, Indian-corn, and autumn rice. A considerable export business is done in hides, but there is no other article of merchandize of any importance, and the imports are quite insig- nificant, being confined entirely to salt, and a few thousand rupees worth of English cloth, and pots and pans fronı Mirzapur or Bhagwantnagar. The trade on leaving Nawabganj takes two main directions—one by the Gogra to Dinapore, Patna, and Lower Bengal, the other through Fyzabad to Cawnpore, and the cotton country. The main export by the latter is rice, while Bengal absorbs the greatest part of the oil seeds, Indian-corn, and hides. Of such part of the trade which passes through other districts before leaving the province, there are absolutely no means of making at all an accurate estimate: nor do I attach any great value to the returns of the registration office for the merchandize which leaves the province at once. It is obviously for the interest of the natives stationed there to leave as many carts out of their tables as possible, and pocket the fees themselves, and effective supervision is impossible. Anyhow the returns, if absolutely accurate, could only give an inadequate idea of the trade actually carried on, as there is nothing to confine carts to this one halting place, and num- bers of them dispose of their merchandize at small bazars, a few miles to the east—in Shahganj, Ismáilpur, and other stations along the river, where they are free from Government toll, Government police protec-