This page needs to be proofread.
xiv
PREFACE
by swamps, intersected by a thousand river channels and maritime backwaters; but gradually dotted, as the traveller recedes from the seaboard, with clearings and patches of rice land.
The statistics in the following pages were collected in the years 1870-73. This first volume deals with an area of ten thousand square miles, containing a population (inclusive of Calcutta) of nearly three million souls.
