1851.] 



Remarks on the Ethnography of Bellary. 



11 



to the west the view is interrupted by a few hills, which attain an 

 elevation of 2,800 feet above the -sea, but on the south and east 

 and north the eye falls on a level plain of black earth with a few 

 bare rocky hills on its surface, and this part of the country being, 

 for the greater part of the year, almost without a tree, it has a bleak 

 and arid appearance particularly uninviting. The only period that 

 the prospect is at all attractive is after the rains fall in June when, 

 from the fertility of the black cotton soil of the country the surface 

 becomes clothed with luxuriant crops. 



The character of the country, however, is that of arid dryness, 

 little rain ever falling here : the evenings and the nights and morn- 

 ings are cold, and it continues cool up to nine or ten o'clock of 

 the day, but from eleven in the forenoon until four in the afternoon 

 the heat is intense and the sparkling glare from the earth is par- 

 ticularly distressing to the eyes. 



There are about forty-five thousand people residing around the 

 fortress, but fully three-fourths of this number are strangers to the 

 country, being the soldiers and their followers and the tradesmen 

 and others in the Cowle Bazaar who depend on the presence of a 

 military camp for a livelihood. 



A population of this description is always fluctuating with the 

 presence or absence of the troops, and a census of one year would, 

 perhaps, in the succeeding year be no indication of the extent of 

 the population. According to a census taken in 1837 there were, in 

 the two divisions of the camp, as follwos : 



C Cowle Bazaar, - 

 1837] 



• \ Bruce Pettah, - 



Total . . 



Males. 



Females. 



Children.! Total. 



6,076 

 4,592 



4,559 

 4,979 



4,937 

 5,287 



15,563 

 14,863 



10,673 



9,538 



10,224 



30,426 



But, in the year 1844, a more extended census was taken and the 

 numbers of the people were as follows: 



