328 PLAGUE IN INDIA. 



convenient. It appeared that a full half of all the plague deaths in 

 it were being returned by one village, 10 miles from the city, which 

 I went to see, accompanied by the tahsildar. It was a large market 

 village of over 4,000 people and 700 houses, Avith very little agricul- 

 ture (chiefly sugar cane) and much cattle trade, more than half the 

 jiopulation being Mohammedans. The Sanitary Inspection Book, 

 one of those ordered by Government circular of 1893 to be kept in 

 large villages, contained at various dates severe strictures upon the 

 squalid conditions, especially of 2 of its 9 mahallas, and remarks 

 on the slaughtering of cattle by certain butchers in their houses, and 

 on the common practice of killing sheep and goats in dwelling houses. 

 There had been plague in it two years ago, and at the time of our visit 

 one whole quarter of the village was evacuated, owing to dead rats 

 having been found and to plague cases thereafter. This quarter 

 consisted of the same two mahallas which had been censured as 

 specially squalid long before plague appeared. There had been 65 

 deaths so far and two fresh cases that day. The other chief center of 

 plague in the tahsil was also a large market village, with a population 

 chiefly Mohammedan. A few other villages had l)een returning 

 plague deaths, but none of them more than 10 in all, and it did not 

 appear that any of the hamlets had plague. The largest purely 

 agricultural village, with 1,600 people and 2,400 acres, of which fully 

 half were cultivated, was distributed in 10 hamlets and had no 

 plague. On an average the Oudh districts have had hardly more 

 than a third as much plague per head of i)opulation as the districts 

 of the Agra province, a ratio which is inversely as the number of 

 hamlets and is most probably dependent thereon. 



HAMLETS V. LARGE VILLAGES. 



Are there any reasons why the more wholesome kind of country 

 life which is found in Oudh should not be extended to other parts of 

 the northwest? I quote a few sentences to show that the plan or 

 type of large compact villages is neither ancient nor immovably fixed 

 even now. In the Gazetteer, of Muzaffarnagar, it is stated : 



When Sikh, Rohilla, Gujar, and Marhatta together, or in turn, ravaged the 

 district, no small community could exist, and the settlers fell back on the strong 

 villages from which they had gone forth. After the final pacification in 1805, 

 colonies were again sent out, but so gradually that the beginning of not a few 

 flourishing villages is still remembered. 



Again, as to the tendency to return to hamlets and their sanitary 

 advantages, Mr. Adams, formerly collector of Benares, wrote in 1888 : 



The sanitary commissioner has not, I think, taken note of the manner in 

 which, in many parts of these provinces, the villages are splitting up. The 

 villagers in old days clustered together for mutual protection, but now they find 

 they can live close to their fields, and hamlets have sprung up all over the 

 country. 



