Dec. 1850. NOACOLLY. SALT REVENUE. 339 



in, to the disquiet of our fresh-water boatmen. Low islands 

 of sand and mud stretch along the horizon i which, 

 together with the ships, distorted by extraordinary refrac- 

 tion, flicker as if seen through smoke. Mud is the all- 

 prevalent feature ; and though the water is not salt, we do 

 not observe in these broad deltas that amount of animal 

 life (birds, fish, alligators, and porpoises), that teems in the 

 narrow creeks of the western Sunderbunds. 



We landed in a canal-like creek at Tuktacolly,* on the 

 17th, and walked to Noacolly, over a flat of hard mud or 

 dried silt, covered with turf of Cynodon Dactylon. We 

 were hospitably received by Dr. Baker, a gentleman who 

 has resided here for twenty-three years; and who commu- 

 nicated to us much interesting information respecting the 

 features of the Gangetic delta. 



Noacolly is a station for collecting the revenue and 

 preventing the manufacture of salt, which, with opium, are 

 the only monopolies now in the hands of the East India 

 Company. The salt itself is imported from Arracan, Ceylon, 

 and even Europe, and is stored in great wooden buildings 

 here and elsewhere. The ground being impregnated with 

 salt, the illicit manufacture by evaporation is not easily 

 checked ; but whereas the average number of cases brought 

 to justice used to be twenty and thirty in a week, they are 

 now reduced to two or three. It is remarkable, that 

 though the soil yields such an abundance of this mineral, 

 the water of the Megna at Noacolly is only brackish, and it 

 is therefore to repeated inundations and surface evapora- 

 tions that the salt is due. Eresh water is found at a very 

 few feet depth everywhere, but it is not good. 



When it is considered how comparatively narrow the 

 sea-board of the delta is, the amount of difference in the 



* " Colly " signifies a muddy creek, such as intersect the delta. 



z 2 



