Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/332

 324 SHA Its extreme length and breadth are 14 and 117 miles, and its area 131 square miles. Three-fifths (6171 per cent.) is cultivated ; more than a fifth (22-1 per cent.) is culturable. About an eighth (12-2 per cent) is returned as barten. Rather more than an eighth (13:47) is rated as third class, i.e., sandy and light. Two-fifths of the cultivated area (4173) is irrigated in the proportion of two-thirds from wells and a third from tanks and ponds. The percentage under groves is 3:99; 6% acres is the average area of cul- tivation per plough. As the rivers and streams of the pargana all fow from north to south the physical features will be most conveniently observed by crossing it from west to east or vice versa. Beginning with the Garra on the west, and the villages along its left bank, the following characteristics will be noticed. The Garra, rising in the Kumaun tarái, flows past Pilibhit and Sháhjahanpur across the Oudh border into pargana Shahabad. Fed with Himalayan snows it never dries up. As remarked of the Saromannagar villages which it fertilizes after leaving this pargana, " along its bank lies a rich belt of tarái (or khádir) villages, whose land always remains moist, so that wells are scarcely required. These villages are subject to floods, and after heavy rains the autumn harvest suffers, but the loss is in such seasons piade good by the increased outturn of the spring crops." In the dry season it is generally fordable. The lever and pot (dhenkli) system of irrigation is used all along it; wherever the bank is too high to admit of the use of the ordinary lift' method. Though the soil in these villages is light, they are the best in the pargana. East of them there is the usual strip of uneven sandy villages marking the edge of the 'bángar' and the 'tarãi.' Further east is a considerable tract of good but backward land, watered by the Narbhú and Gauria nálas holding one or two large jhils, and thickly interspersed, in the southern half of the pargana, with dhák jungle and brushwood. The soil here is firm and good and retentive of water, and bears fine rice crops, but wild animals do much damage in the jungle parts, and rents are low and cultivators rather scarce. This tract will gradually improve. Large wells worked by bullocks can be cheaply dug in it for from three to five rupees, and last about three years. Further to the east the quality of the soil falls off, becoming light and poor. Towards the Sukheta, which forms the eastern boundary, a quantity of dhák' and thorn jungle is met with, full of níl-gåe, wild hog, hare, pea-fowl, partridge, and bush quail. The cost of protecting the crop from the depredation of jungle animals is a heavy drag on the cultivator. The Oudh and Rohilkhand Railway runs through the pargana, with a station near Shahabad. The road (unmetailed) from Shahjahánpur to Hardoi also runs through it, parallel with and about two miles west of the railway. From Shahabad other unmotalled roads branch off from it