Imperial Gazetteer of India Volume 8 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 Excerpt: ...Gopalpura, is only 600 feet above the level of the plain. The general aspect of Bikaner is dreary and desolate in the extreme. Elphinstone, who passed through in 1808 on his way towards Kabul, wrote that, within a short distance of the capital, the country was as waste as the wildest parts of Arabia; but during and just after the rains it wears a very different appearance, becoming a vast green pasture-land covered with the richest and most succulent grasses. The only rivers are the Ghaggar in the north-east and the Katli in the east. The former once flowed through the northern part of the State and, according to Tod, joined the Indus; but it is now dry, except in the rains, and even then the water rarely flows more than a mile or two west of Hanumangarh. By the construction in 1897, at the joint expense of the British Government and the Darbar, of a weir at Otu, about 8 miles west of Sirsa, the water of the Ghaggar is now utilized for feeding two canals which form the only important irrigation works in the State. The Katli is a river of Jaipur which, in years of good rainfall, flows for a few miles into Bikaner territory in the south of the Rajgarh tahsil. There are two salt lakes, one at Chhapar in the south near Sujangarh and the other at Lunkaransar, 51 miles north-east of the capital; both are small, and the latter only is worked now. Of artificial lakes the most notable is that at Gajner, 19 miles south-west of Bikaner city, where the Maharaja has a palace, shooting-box, and garden. Nearly the whole of the State is covered with blown sand driven up from the Rann of Cutch by the prevailing south-west winds; the sandhills are of the transverse type, with their longer axes at right angles to the direction of the wind. Nummulitic rocks, limestones, and cl...