OR CUTTACK. - 171 



triangle where there is a net placed with a large pouch ready for their re- 

 ception. The quantity obtained at a haul in this way is often prodigious. 

 The produce is taken to the neighbouring villages for sale, after reserving a 

 sufficiency for home consumption, and a large quantity travels far into the 

 interior, unprepared in any way, which it of course reaches in the last stage 

 of putridity, but not on that account a bit the less palatable or acceptable 

 to the nice and scrupulous Hindu. 



On emerging from the insalubrious and uninteresting tract just describ- 

 ed, you arrive at the second and most important division of Cuttack, called 

 the Mogulbandi or Khaliseh land which is divided into 150 Pergunnahs, 

 and 2361 Estates of individuals, recorded in the public account of the Bri- 

 tish Government as Zemindars and Proprietors of the soil. Though this 

 region be in general highly cultivated, and produces most of the grains and 

 vegetables common in Bengal, its soil is certainly for the most part of a 

 poor and unfruitful description. South of the Mahanadi it may be cha- 



racterized as generally light and sandy. Beyond that river, and especially 

 .in the neighbourhood of the hills, it acquires a clayey consistency, and ap- 

 pearance, and is often remarkably white. Often too, for miles together it 

 has the surface strewed with a thin sprinkling of gravel or limestone con- 

 cretions called by the natives Gengti. This description of soil extends 

 nearly to Midnapore. It is generally speaking hungry and unproductive, 

 particularly near the hills ; and large plains occur, as about Dhamnagher and 

 Badrak, which are wholly unfit for cultivation, growing nothing but low 

 stunted brushwood, chiefly the wild Corunda and tufts of the Bena grass. 



Rice is the great article of produce, and consequently of food, through- 

 out Orissa Proper. In the Pergunnahs north of the Byterini it is almost 

 the sole object of agricultural labor. The grain is in general large and 

 nutritious but coarse, and is considered far inferior to the average produce 

 of Bengal and Behar. The two great rice crops of Cuttack are called the 

 Sared and Beali. Of these the first and principal one is sown in May 



and June, and reaped from the middle of November to the middle of Ja- 



V 2 



