44 PEOGEESS IN WESTEEN INDIA 



estimate, and in doing so we have to balance facts 

 which fall on the credit side against facts which fall 

 on the debit side of the account. 



To consider some important matters which tend to 

 indicate agricultural progress, the first thing that may- 

 be mentioned is the steady increase in cultivation 

 which has taken place during the last thirty years, 

 until at the present time there is practically no land 

 fit for cultivation which is not occupied. The great 

 increase in the area of cultivation, resulting from 

 settled conditions and orderly government, had taken 

 place before 1885, the year from which general 

 statistics are available. By that year the cultivated 

 land was already fully occupied in a few of the more 

 advanced and thickly-populated districts such as 

 Kaira, Broach and Satara ; but in other districts 

 a steady advance in cultivation took place during the 

 next thirty years, which amounted to about 300,000 

 acres in the case of each of the more remote districts, 

 such as Panch Mahals, Khandesh and Bijapur, and 

 100,000 acres, per district, in most of the rest. Dur- 

 ing the same period the occupied area in Sind in- 

 creased from 3,000,000 to 9,000,000 acres. 



Next we may consider land values and rentals. In 

 the latter days of the Peshwas' rule land in the 

 Bombay Deccan had little or no sale value, and 

 holdings occupied on a permanent basis hardly 

 changed hands at all ; but, with the advent of settled 

 conditions and definite assessments land soon acquired 

 a sale value, and by 1860 was changing hands fairly 



