186 ON ORISSA PROPER 



To the northward of the above, the Solandi, Kaus Bans, Burabalang 

 and the Subanrekha, are all respectable rivers, more especially the two 

 latter. They deposit near their mouths a considerable quantity of fine mud 

 as well as sand. 



The whole of the Mogulbandi between the Chilka lake and the Brahma- 

 ni river, is peculiarly subject to inundation from its proximity to the hills, 

 and the astonishing rapidity with which the torrents descend in the rains ; 

 the strange conformation of the channels of some of the principal rivers, which 

 are very broad within the hills, but divide soon after leaving 1 them into a 

 number of narrow streams; and also from the practice which has existed from 

 very old times of using embankments. As an instance of rapid rise, it deserves 

 to be recorded that, during the heavy rains of 1817, the waters of the Ca- 

 jori rose in one night a height of eighteen feet, as ascertained by careful 

 measurement. This immense volume of water, which was then perhaps one 

 and a half mile in breadth by thirty or forty feet depth, over-topped the 

 general level of the town and station by a height of nearly six feet, and was 

 only restrained from overwhelming them, by a solid embankment faced 

 with stone and supported by buttresses, the work of former governments. 

 The defence alluded to, however, called the revetment, has yielded in pla- 

 ces within the memory of man, and the consequences were of course most 

 tremendous. The Cuttack rivers are generally swollen to an extreme height 

 about three times during each rainy season, and at such periods the crops 

 and villages in many portions of the district, are exposed to imminent ha- 

 zard. To guard against the evil as much as practicable, embankments have 

 been always maintained by government, at a large expense. Such works 

 are indispensibly necessary in the state to which things have been brought, 

 but they obviously only aggravate the evil in the long run, and sometimes 

 occasion direct mischief, by being injudiciously constructed to suit the 

 interests of particular parties, without a due advertence to the general wel- 

 fare. The embankments or bunds are solid mounds of earth well sloped 

 and turfed on either side, the principal ones measuring from forty to fifty 

 and sixty feet in breadth, and eight to sixteen in height. The havoc occa- 



