52 CLIMATE AND EESOUECES OF 







amount conveyed by the Ganges through its various mouths 

 to the sea. The greater part of this vast volume of water 

 has fallen on the plains of the drainage basin of the Ganges, 

 and if the system I have described of banking up the fields 

 were carried out throughout the country, so as to prevent 

 surface- drainage, we should hear no more of floods and the 

 damage done by them. 



It is only two or three years since the towns of Jounpore 

 and Azimgurh, on two separate rivers, both rising in the 

 plains, were nearly washed away by floods which must have 

 originated in the plains, a clear proof that improved surface- 

 drainage is not required in that part of the country. Besides 

 the more notorious cases of damage by floods, such as the 

 carrying away of towns and villages, the cutting away of lands, 

 railway embankments, and bridges, and the fevers and other 

 illnesses caused by their drying up, there are other evils the 

 results of floods which are not so generally known. Large 

 areas of land which only a few years ago used amongst other 

 produce, to carry rain crops, are now never sown with those 

 crops, as the land has now, by increased surface -drainage 

 higher up the country become so liable to inundation, that the 

 risk of loss from that cause is greater than the prospect of 

 gain. The cultivation is not safe. It is too much of a gam- 

 bling transaction, with heavy odds against the cultivator who 

 is rash enough to try it. 



The districts of Seharunpore and Mozuffurnuggur, where 

 irrigation from the Ganges Canal has been largely practised of 

 late years (the canal was opened about twenty years ago), 

 have become notoriously unhealthy, and special inquiries and 

 reports have been made on the causes of the unhealthiness of 

 these districts, which previous to the opening of the canal 

 were as healthy as any in Upper India, in fact, were favourite 

 districts. The results of the inquiries and reports is a recom- 



