390 NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES AND OUDH. CUPIL rent at shorter intervals than ten years, or unless a revision of the revenue is in process. Tenants-at-will are liable to eviction at the end of the agricultural year, provided that the landlord serves a notice before ist April in the North-Western Provinces and 15th April in Oudh, and pays the value of all unexhausted improvements. In the North-Western Provinces 38.5 per cent., and in Oudh 78 per cent., of the cultivators are tenants-at-will. Condition of the Peasantry.-In favoured localities the peasantry are fairly well off; in the hill Districts they are well-to-do and independent; but in Bundelkhand they still suffer from the effects of former misrule and from the disasters of recent famine. The principal food of the people is wheat, barley, and the millets (joár and bájra). The highest castes among the agriculturists are said by Mr. J. C. Nesfield, in a work specially devoted to the subject of caste in the North-West, to be the Tagás and Bhuinhárs, who are distinguished from other agricultural castes by their forbidding the remarriage of their widow's ; next the Málís (gardeners--málára wreath of flowers), Tambulis (pán raiserstambul = the pán creeper), Kúrmís, Káchhís (kachh = alluvial soil on a river's bank), and Kandus (riverain people - kind = river bank); lastly, the low-caste Bayárs and Lodhas, who are clearers of jungle. In 1881, the average payment to the State on each cultivated acre was 25. 6d. (by far the larger part being land revenue); the average payment on each cultivated acre to local funds and cesses was 6d. in addition; and the average payment per cultivated acre on account of rent was 6s. od. In 1884, the average incidence of the land revenue (including local rates and cesses) over the cultivated area of the united Provinces was a fraction over 3s. 4d. per cultivated acre. Natural Calamities.—The North-Western Provinces suffer, like the rest of India, froin drought and its consequence, famine. The first great scarcity of which there are definite records occurred in the year 1783–84, and is known as the chalisa famine. Little rain fell for over two years; and the apathy of the native government, under which the greater part of the Provinces then remained, allowed the calamity to proceed unchecked. Thousands died of starvation; the bodies were not removed from where they lay; no relief was given to the sick or dying; and universal anarchy prevailed. The distress extended to Benares, where Warren Hastings witnessed its effects. Many villages devastated during this year never recovered, and their sites are still marked by vacant mounds. The next great famine occurred in 1803-04, just after the British occupation of the Doáb. It was most severely felt in that part of the Provinces; but it also caused a rise of prices in the Benares Division and Rohilkhand. In 1813-14, 1828, and 1833 famine
