Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/307

 SAN 299 In shape it is an irregular rhombus, with an extreme length and breadth of 31 and 22 miles. Its area is 329 square miles, of which 170 or 51:14 per cent. are cultivated. Rather more than a fifth (22.56 per cent.) is culturable; a fourth (24-7 por cent.) is returned as barren. More than a fourth (27.65 per cent.) is rated as third class, that is, sandy, light, and uneven. Rather less than a third (31-05 per cent.) of the cultivated area is irrigated in the proportion of about four parts from tanks and ponds to one from wells. The percentage under groves is only 1:6; 74 acres is the average area of cultivation per plough. There is nothing very striking or interesting about its physical fea- tures. The statistics already given show that it is poorly wooded, that the area of barren and sandy soil is very large, and that wells are scarce. This last circumstance is owing to the sandiness of the subsoil--a feature always met with in the vicinity of Indian rivers. The worst and sandiest tract is to the north near Beniganj and Mánjhgáon. Here the neighbourhood of the Gumti, which forms the north-eastern border, is plainly visible for miles inland from it, in the great irregularity of the surface, scantiness of wells and jhíls, and the lightness of the sandy undulating soil. This region abounds in extensive herds of deer, whose depredations add seriously to the cultivator's difficulties. Southwards, as the scene shifts towards the centre of the pargana, a more even surface and a firiner soil is reach- ed, abounding in jhils of no great size, of which the largest is at Rai- son. It is notable for the number of grebe on it, and the advantages for duck shooting presented by the embankments across it. The Baita nála rises among the jhíls in the east centre of the pargana and drains its south-eastern side. Large traets of dhák jungle and barren waste follow its course, and it is not much used for irrigation. Towards the Sai on the west the soil again deteriorates. It becomes sandy and unable to retain water. Jhils disappear. The urface becomes uneven. But the slope into the basin of the Sai is sneither steep nor deep, so that there is comparatively little of the scour which so disastrously affects the Gumti side of the district. For the same reason the land on this side is less sandy, that is, less denuded of its loany particles. A few spotted deer (chital) still linger in the Utar Guián jungle near Kachhona. The main road is the unmetalled one from Lucknow to Shahjahanpur, passing through Sandila, from Malihabad, and Kachhona, on its way to Hardoi. Parallel to it now runs the Oudh and Rohilkhand Railway with stations at Sandíla and Kachhona. From Sandila other unmetalled dis- trict roads branch off south-westward to Bangarmau, westward to Ghaus- ganj and Mallánwán, and northward to Beniganj and Nímkhár. The chief products are barley, wheat, bájra, gram, arhar, másh, paddy, and juár. Of these at survey barloy covered a fourth of the cultivated area; wheat a fifth ; bájra and gram together rather more than a fifth ; rather more than another fifth was cropped with arhar, másh, paddy, and juár. The areas returned as under cotton, cane, poppy, tabacco, and indigo were respectively 2,618, 1,789, 276, 267, and 9 acres..