The number and names of the
villages are still kept up in the accounts.
_February_ 5, 1850.--Kurrunpoor Mirtaha, ten miles over a plain of
fine muteear soil, scantily cultivated, but bearing excellent spring
crops where it is so. Not far from our last camp at Gokurnath, we
entered a belt of jungle three miles wide, consisting chiefly of
stunted, knotty, and crooked sakhoo trees, with underwood and rank
chopper grass. This belt of jungle is the same we passed through, as
above described, between Poknapoor and Gokurnath. It runs from the
great forest to the north, a long way down south-east, into the
Khyrabad district. From this belt to our present ground, six miles,
the road passes over a fine plain, nine-tenths of which is covered
with this grass, but studded with mango-groves and fine single trees.
The forest runs along to the north of our road--which lay east--from
one to three miles distant, and looked very like a continued mango-
grove. The level plain of rich soil extends up through the forest to
the foot of the hills, and is all the way capable of the finest
cultivation. Here and there the soil runs into light doomuteea; and
in some few parts even into bhoor, in proportion as the sand abounds;
but generally the soil is the fine muteear, and very fertile. The
whole plain is said to have been in cultivation thirty years ago,
when Hakeem Mehndee held the contract; but the tillage has been
falling off ever since, under the bad or oppressive management of
successive contractors.
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