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Excerpt from Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh, Vol. 1
The average distance of water from the surface has been esti mated in the reports on the Sarda Canal project at twenty-eight feet. But it varies greatly in different parts of the province. In the Tarai or sub-himalayan tract it is rarely more than fifteen, and sometimes as little as four or five feet. South of the Gogra wells have to be sunk to a depth of from twenty-five to sixty feet before water is struck. The soil is naturally a rich alluvial deposit of light loam, stiffening in places into pure clay, and here and there degenerating into barren sand. By far the greater part of the land returned as unculturable is made up of the wide usar plains of the south and west, which are covered by a thick saline effiorescence known as rah, fatal to any growth except the hardiest grasses. So many contradictory theories have been advanced, and so little is known of the nature and causes of this agricultural curse, that the short preface to a Gazetteer is not the place for their consideration but it seems unquestionably to be a frequent result of over - cropping, and that a thicker population does more to increase than any known remedy to obviate it. Except minute particles of gold, which are washed down by the hill torrents in quantities too infinitesimal to repay their collection, valuable minerals are not known to exist. Salt was manufactured to a large extent during the native rule, and might be still, if it were not for the direct preventive action of Government. N odules of car bonate of lime, known as kankar, are found in considerable deposits all over the province just below the surface, and afford an excellent material for hardening roads and the production of lime for building.
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