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Fort Victoria is chiefly useful to the Company for furnishing 
Bombay with oxen; by which the markets are supplied with 
tolerable beef for the European and Mahomedan inhabitants, and 
especially the English garrison: a number of buffaloes and horned 
cattle are bred in this part of India; the latter, though small, are 
very serviceable in agriculture, and thousands are employed in the 
mercantile caravans. The sheep of the Concan, as in most of the 
other provinces, are long, lank, unsightly animals; instead of the 
snowy wool and silky fleece of the English flocks, they are covered 
with a coarse brown or grey hair, possessing very few qualities of 
the wool : in some places they make cameleens, a winter covering 
and blanket for the poor, from this hair, by twisting it into a 
thread, and weaving it in a sort of loom: but a considerable ma- 
nufacture in the Concan, or more properly the Deccan, is the 
spinning and dying cotton thread, which is sold to the people of 
Meritch, and wove by them into pieces of cloth called leugra, 
which forms the principal part of the Hindoo female dress. 
In most of the towns and considerable villages is a weekly 
market, to which the inhabitants of the neighbouring country bring 
their commodities, either for sale or barter: there is also a collol, 
or distiller, who pays a duty to government for the privilege of 
distilling spirits from rice, jagree, mowah, and various other ar- 
ticles: in the Concan there seems to be no prohibition to drink- 
ing spirits, except to the Brahmins: it is more generally inter- 
dicted in the Deccan, and the decree rigidly enforced. A pecu- 
liar species of the brab-tree is thinly scattered on the Concan 
hills, from which they draw a quantity of nerah, similar to that 
from the common palmyra; from which this materially differs; the 
