462 ORISSA. pundits or teachers, and Cuttack District has an auxiliary agency in the shape of chief gurus, or itinerant schoolmasters, who receive no regular salaries, but are rewarded at the end of the year by the quantity and quality of the work they do. Total State grant-in-aid of primary education, £5909 in 1883. Municipalities. —There is one first-class municipality, Puri, erected under Act v. of 1876; income of Purí in 1884, £1927, of which £1192 accrued from taxation proper, and the remainder from miscellaneous receipts. The natives on the municipal board number 14, and the Europeans 4. Cuttack, Balasor, Kendrápára, and Jajpur are municipalities of the second-class ; aggregate income, £5279, of which £4619 accrued from taxation proper; aggregate number of native members of boards, 50; of Europeans, 13. The incidence of municipal taxation for all Lower' Bengal was is. 4 d. in 1884; over British Orissa the incidence for the same year was is. o d. Natural Calamities. - Orissa owes to its rivers, not only its rare deltaic fertility, but also some of the greatest calamities which can afflict a country. Besides its copious water-supply, amounting to a discharge of 2,760,000 cubic feet per second in time of floods, Orissa has a local rainfall of 621 inches per annun. Nevertheless, the uncontrolled state of the water-stipply has subjected the Province, from time immemorial, to drought no less than to inundation. A great drought followed by famine and fever devastated Orissa in 1830; and in a smaller measure, during 1833–34, 1836–37, 1839-40, 1840-41. The flood of 1866 destructively inundated 1052 square miles of the he waters lying from 3 to 15 feet deep in most parts for thirty days, submerging the homesteads of 1} million of husbandmen, and destroying crops to the ralue of 3 millions sterling. The Province was then just emerging from the terrible famine of 1865-66, which swept away one-fourth of the whole population, and the people were looking forward to the approaching harvest as their one chance of safety when this fresh calamity took place. This inundation does not stand alone. Eleven years previously, an equally ruinous flood had buried the country deeper in water, and forty years ago a tidal wave and river inunclation had completely desolated a large part of Balasor District. The floods and droughts of Orissa constitute a yearly charge upon the revenues of the Province, exceeding in absolute outlay three times the whole revenue derived from the inhabitants of the Tributary States. Engineering skill may ultimately solve the great problem of checking the flood water before it reaches the lower levels, and thereby free the country from the misery and desolation such calamities bring upon it. Much has already been done by Government to husband the abundant water-supply: The Orissa canals, which have been fully described in the article on the MAHANADI
