Page:The Imperial Gazetteer of India - Volume 10 (2nd edition).pdf/33

 JURSHIDABAD.

21

Physical Aspect. The District is divided into two nearly equal portions by the river Bhagirathi, the ancient channel of the Ganges, which flows due north and south. The two tracts form a striking contrast to cach other in their geology and agriculture. The country west of the Bhagirathi, known as the Rárh, forms a continuation of the hard clay and nodular limestone, which extends through the neighbouring District of Birbhúm from the mountains of Chutiá Nágpur. The general level is high and slightly undulating, but interspersed with bíls or broad marshes and seamed by hill torrents ; at many points the formation terminates in clay cliffs overhanging the Bhagirathi. The soil of the Rárh tract is greyish or reddish, mixed with lime and oxide of iron; and beds of kankar or nodular limestone are scattered here and there. The rivers are liable to sudden freshets, but they never lay the entire country under water for any long space of time. The fields, therefore, do not possess the fertility of a deltaic tract. They rarely produce more than one crop in the year, the áman or winter rice.

The Bágri, or eastern division of Murshidábád, differs in no respect from the ordinary alluvial plains of Eastern Bengal. It lies enclosed within the Ganges, Bhagirathi, and Jalangi rivers, and is also intersected hy minor offshoots of the Ganges. There are a few permanent swamps; but the whole country is low-lying, and liable to annual inundations, which sonietimes, as in the present year (1885), are so severe as to cause widespread suffering, but usually do no more than deposit a topdressing of inexhaustible fertility. In variety of crops, this portion of the District is not surpassed by any part of Bengal. The cíus or early rice crop forms the great staple of agriculture. A second or coldweather crop is also yielded by many of the fields.

In the north-west of the District there are a few small detached hillocks, which are said to be of basaltic formation. The river system is constituted by the Ganges, its offshoots and tributaries. The Ganges or Padma forms the eastern boundary of the District along its entire length, but nowhere enters it. Its banks are extremely subject to alluvion and diluvion. It is navigable throughout the year by boats of four tons burthen, and is nowhere fordable. The only marts of inportance on the Murshidabad side of the Ganges are Bhagwángolá or Alatali and Dhulián. The offshoots of the Ganges on this bank comprise the Bhagirathi, Bhairab, Siálmári, and Jalangi. The Bhagirathi, which branches off from the parent streain near the police station of Sutí, is far the most important river in Murshidabad. Though now only navigable during half the year, it carries a large trade, and flows past all the ancient and modern sites of interest in the District. Its channel undoubtedly represents the original bed of the Ganges, and also the farthest south-western limit of the Gangetic delta. The Bhagirathi retains the sanctity which the Great River here loses; and