74 CLIMATE AND EESOUECES OP 



care taken to provide water for agricultural purposes, nor was 

 there that anxious solicitude about the rainfall there now is, 

 and which may be said to have reached a state of chronic 

 alarm. 



There was a famine a very severe one in 1837 or 1838, 

 which prevailed more especially in the Dooab, or country 

 between the Ganges and the Jumna. This tract of land 

 between these rivers was then, as now, more bare of trees 

 than the country immediately north of the Ganges, and irriga- 

 tion from wells was here in vogue before it was established in 

 Rohilcund. I was told some two or three years ago by some 

 zemindars of the Budaon district in Eohilcund that some fifty 

 or sixty years previous there was no irrigation in their part 

 of the district. " It might have been used/' they said, " by 

 gardeners for vegetables, but was never attempted, or even 

 thought of, for grain crops. In those days there were no 

 famines ; but now, since irrigation has increased, famines are 

 continually recurring ; the cattle, too, in former days did not 

 suffer for want of forage, whereas numbers now die annually 

 from want of food/' 



This being stated by different men in different parts of the 

 district, showed that irrigation must have been unknown 

 throughout the district for corn crops at the time they alluded 

 to, fifty or sixty years ago. The Settlement Records of the 

 district show that at the former settlement of 1835, only 

 4,991 acres were irrigated to 633,590 unirrigated, or 1 to 

 126; while at the settlement lately concluded, 202,505 acres 

 are irrigated to 629,528 unirrigated, or 1 to 3. 



Irrigation from wells in the Budaon district is said to have 

 been introduced by emigrants from the Dooab, where it had 

 been earlier practised. It would be interesting to learn when 

 irrigation from wells originated in the Dooab probably it was 

 pretty general previous to the famine of 1837 or 1838. 



