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 BALASOR.

2

Towards the coast, the soil has a distinctly saline and the manufacture of salt is carried on to a considerable extent. The Arable Tract, which adjoins this sandy strip, is a dead level of rice-fields; the soil is lighter in colour and more friable than that of Bengal generally. There is no forest throughout this tract, and the only trees are those which cluster round the villages, with a few scattered clumps of palms and screw-pines. The Submontane Tract is undulating, with a red soil, much broken up into ravines along the base of the hills. Masses of laterite, buried in hard ferruginous clay, appear above the surface as rocks or slabs. At Kopari, in kild Ambohata, about two square miles are almost paved with such slabs, dark red in colour, perfectly flat, and polished like plates of iron. A thousand mountain torrents have scooped out for themselves at

long intervals.

taste,

picturesque ravines, clothed with an ever fresh verdure of prickly thorns, stunted, gnarled shrubs,

and here and there a noble

forest tree.

Large

covered with sal jungle, which nowhere, however, attains to any great height. Balasor is watered by five principal rivers the tracts are

—

SuB.^RNAREKHA Streak of Gold’), the Panchpara, the Burab.alang (‘ Old Twister’), the Kansbans, and the Bait.ar.ani (the Styx of Hindu mythology). The Subarnarekha enters Balasor from Midnapur District, and after flowing a tortuous southern course with gigantic bends The river is navigable east and west, falls into the Bay of Bengal. by country craft as far as Kalikapur, i6 miles from its mouth. It is nowhere fordable within Balasor District during the rainy months. The Panchpara is formed by the junction of an intricate network of small streams, of which the most noteworthy are the Jamira, the Bans, and the Bhairingi, which unite, bifurcate, and reunite till they fall into the sea in one channel.

channels, the Bans,

is

The

boats of four tons burthen

among

tide runs

deep enough all

up

for ten miles.

One

of the

at certain parts of its course for

the year round.

The Burabalang

rises

and after an extremely tortuous course across Balasor District, during which it receives two small tributaries, The river is navigable by brigs, also falls into the Bay of Bengal. sloops, and sea-going steamers as far as the town of Balasor, about i6 miles up its tortuous course but the entrance to the river is difficult owing to the sandbar across its mouth. The Kansbans is only navigable for a few miles, and is notorious in the District for its sudden floods and the large extent of country which it submerges in the rainy weather. The Baitarani, which forms the boundary-line between Balasor and Cuttack, becomes the Dhamra five miles from its mouth, The Baitarani at its junction with the Brahmani from the Cuttack side. receives on its Balasor side two tributaries, the Salandi (or, more Reference has been made to the properly, Salnadi) and the Matai. the Morbhanj

hills,



sandbar

at the

mouth of

the Burabalang



similar obstructions block