Page:The Imperial Gazetteer of India - Volume 10 (2nd edition).pdf/367



NORTH-IESTERN PROVINCES AND OUDII. 355 Nepal; on the east and south-east by Champáran, Sáran, and Shalábád Districts of Lower Bengal; on the south by Hazáribagh District of Chutiá Nagpur, Rewa State, the Native States of Bundelkhand, and Sagar District of the Central Provinces; and on the west by the Native States of Gwalior, Dholpur, and Bhartpur, the Punjab Districts of Gurgaon, Delhi, Karnál, and Ambála, and the States of Sirniúr and Jabal, the Jumna river marking the boundary between the Punjab and the North-Western Provinces. The administrative capital and principal seat of the Lieutenant - Governor is at ALLAHABAD. The table on the next page gires the population of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh in 1872 and 1881 according to Districts. Physical Aspects.— The North-Western Provinces and Oudh occupy, roughly speaking, the whole of the basins of the Ganges and the Jumna (Jamuna), corresponding to Hindustán Proper of the Muhammadan chroniclers. The traet comprising the valleys of the Gogra and the Gúnti has long been artificially separated from the remainder of the great plain, as the kingdom of OUDH; and although now under the administrative charge of the Lieutenant - Governor at Allahabad, it remains, in respect of its courts, a distinct Chief Commissionership. With this exception, the North-Western Provinces include the whole upper portion of the wide Gangetic basin, from the Himalayas and the Punjab plain to the Vindhyan plateau and the rice-fields of Behar. Taken as a whole, the LieutenantGovernorship consists of the richest wheat-bearing country in India, irrigated both naturally by the rivers which take their rise in the northern mountains, and artificially by the magnificent system of canals and distributaries, which owe their origin to British enterprise. It contains many of the most famous cities of Indian history, and it is studded at the present day with thriving villages, interspersed at greater distances with commercial towns. Except during the hot-weather months from May to October, when the crops are off the fields, the general aspect is that of a verdant and well- tilled but very monotonous plain, only merging into hilly or mountainous country at the extreme edges of the basin on the south and north. The course of the great rivers marks the prevailing south-east slope of the land, which falls away from the Himalayas, the Rajputána uplands, and the Vindhyan plateau, south-eastwards towards the Bay of Bengal. The chief natural features are thus determined by the main strear whose alluvial deposits first formed the central portion of the North-Western Provinces; while the currents afterwards cut for themselves deep channels through the detritus brought down by their own agency from the ring of hills or uplands on the north, south, and west. [Continued on 357.