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16 CHAPTER II.*

A FEW FACTS AND FIGURES. The districts which since the beginning of the present century hare composed the province of Oudh form an irre- gular pentagon, bounded on four sides by the North- Western Provinces, and on the fifth or northern side by the territory of Naipal, which for about sixty miles, or rather more than a third of the line of contact, towards the east, is conterminous with the first range of the Sewalik hills, bat towards the west includes a strip of the Tarai country at their base, varying in width from ten to thirty miles. The area of the province amounts, in round numbers, to 24,000 square miles, of which about 13,000, or, say, 55 per cent., containing 8,400,000 acres, are cultivated. Of the re-

literature, I can, of course, claim but little originality for its contents. To obviate the necessity of a wearisomely frequent recourse to inverted commas, I may here note that I am indebted for most of my materials, to the "Oudh Census Report of 1869," by Mr. J. C. Williams; the "Oudh Gazeteer," by Mr. C. W. McMinn; and the " Introduction to the Oudh Gazeteer," by Mr. W. C. Benett, all members of the Bengal Civil Service.
 * As this chapter is mainly a compilation from official or semi-official