Page:The Imperial Gazetteer of India - Volume 10 (2nd edition).pdf/76



64 MUZAFFARGARH TAHSIL. north, Muzaffargarh in the centre, and Alipur in the south. Municipalities have been established at the ten towns or villages of Muzaffargarh, Khángarh, Shahr Sultán, Jatoi, Alipur, Khairpur, Sítpur, Kinjar, Kot Adu, and Daera Dínpána. Their aggregate income in 1883-84 amounted to £2355, or an average of 25. per head of the population (23,693) within municipal limits. Medical Aspects. — The District is unusually lot and dry, but no records of temperature exist. The average annual rainfall for a period of twenty-one years ending 1881 amounted to only 5'9 inches, the maximum during that period being 12'4 inches in 1872–73, and the minimum, 1'2 inches in 1866–67. In 1883 the rainfall was 3.7 inches. Remittent and intermittent fevers and skin diseases prerail widely. Small-pox is now uncommon, and cholera all but unknown. The total number of deaths reported in 1883 amounted to 11,790, or 35 per thousand. Five Government charitable dispensaries, at Muzaffargarh, Alipur, Khángarh, Kot Adu, and Rangpur, afforded relief in 1883 to 43,968 persons, of whom 703 were in-patients. [For further particulars regarding Muzaffargarh, see the Gasetteer of Muzaffargarh District, published under the authority of the Punjab Government (Lahore, 1884); Mr. E. Stack's Memorandum upon Current Land Settlements in the temporarily Settled Parts of British India, p. 330; the Punjab Census Report for 1881; and the several annual Administration and Departmental Reports of the Punjab Government.] Muzaffargarh. - Central tahsil of Muzaffargarh District, Punjab ; situated between 29° 40' and 30° 16' N., and between 70° 52' and 71° 20' 30" E. long. ; consisting of the middle belt between the Chenab and the Indus, south of the thal, and fertilized by the annual inundations of both rivers. Area (1881), 925 square miles; number of towns and villages, 391 ; houses, 30,050; families, 32,171. Population (1868) 130,724; (1881) 146,885, namely, males 80,351, and females 66,534, showing a total increase since 1868 of 16,161 souls, or 123 per cent., in thirteen years. Classified according to religio there were in 1881 – Muhammadans, 125,820, or 85-7 per cent.; Hindus, 20,390, or 13.9 per cent.; Sikhs, 631; Jains, 11 ; and Christians, 33. Of the 391 towns and villages, 281 were merc hamlets of less than five hundred inhabitants ; 74 villages contained between five hundred and a thousand; 28 from one to two thousand; while 8 had upwards of two thousand inhabitants. The average area under cultivation for the five years 1877–78 to 1881-82 was 269 square miles, or 172,252 acres, the arca under the principal crops being—wheat, 84,893 acres; rice, 9984 acres; jour, 6512 acres; bijra, 4787 acres; gram, 4564 acres; moth, 2687 acres; cotton, 15,643 acres; indigo, 10,083 acres; and sugar-cane, 3350 acres. Revenue of the tahsil, £27,350. The administrative staff, including officers attached to the District head