— GON
S51
on the banks of which are grown the finest crops of rice and sugar. Excepting the Kuwana jungles, the whole pargana is under high cultivation, and produces splendid crops of wheat, rice, sugar, and in the north gram and arhar, in the south Indian-corn and barley. The soil is generally a light and fertile loam; and pure clay and unmixed sand are equally rarely met with. The whole lies within the slightly raised table-land known as the uparhSr, but water, if not so near the surface as in the region along the Gogra, can always be struck at a depth of from 15 to 20 Irrigation is very common, and 38,957 acres are watered from 6,870 feet. brick, and 2,623 mud wells, while 5,999 ponds and tanks fertilise another 30,235 acres. Of the whole area, 13,846 acres, or little more than half per cent., are under groves, and 33,132 acres have been returned as unculturable. The last figure includes village sites, roads and tanks and as a matter of fact there is hardly an acre in the pargana unsulturable from the fault of its soil. The cultivated area is 201,300 acres, or 62 per cent of the whole. Of this, 130,450 acres are under spring, and 113,920 acres under autumn crops, while 56,850 bear a double harvest. The area in acres under each of the principal staples is as follows
jhlls,
Acres.
Eice
...
...
...
Kodo
...
...
...
Indian-corn
...
...
...
Sugarcane "Wheat
...
...
...
...
...
...
76,750 17,500 10,600 4,582 41,287
llCr
ll'Sl
Barley
...
...
...
12,875
) >
Autumn
crops,
)
)
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)
The total number of holdings is returned at 40,563, which gives an average of almost exactly 4 acres to a farm but as many cultivators hold land in two or three different villages, and are returned separately for their tenure in each, it is likely that the actual average area in the possession of each undivided family of cultivators is between 5 and 6 acres. The number of ploughs is perhaps under-stated at 31,870, which gives the high average of 6 J acres to each plough.
This, however, may be considerably reduced when we remember that large areas are under spade cultivation, a subject on which no returns are The Government demand in 1808 A.D. stood at Rs. 3,21,296 available. and in 1822 it rose to eight years later it had fallen to Rs. 2,85,243 !Rs. 3,70,570, the largest sum collected before English rule except in the year 1850, when Rs. 3,85,704 were assessed on a pargana. It is curious that Raja Darshan Singh should have failed to raise the revenue here as he did in every other place of which he was nazim; and in 1842 and 1843, the two last years of his authority, he only realised Rs. 2,59,601 and Rs. 2,59,702, or nearly a lac of rupees less than the ordinary collections. As the revenue was collected direct from the several village proprietors or
taluqdars, and not levied in a lump sum from a raja, it must have borne a much higher proportion to the gross rents than it did in the parganas of BaMmpur and Tulsipur. At annexation a sumrnary investigation was made into the gross assets, and on the principle of taking half as the Government share, the land revenue is fixed at Rs. 2,55,001-15, or Re. 0-12 on the No returns exist to show the area then under cultivation, and total area. impossible to deduce the rate of incidence on the acre of tillage. it is
