The season of 1839-40 began propitiously; but towards the middle of the year the district was visited by the disastrous cyclone and inundation referred to below. In 1840-41 'the early rains were again wanting, the north-east monsoon failed, and sickness was prevalent.'
This unfortunate cycle had thus lasted twelve years, and Sir Henry Montgomery summed up the case by saying that of these twelve 'five were marked by peculiar distress and three were bad.' The population, which in 1821 had amounted to 738,308, had decreased by 1839-40 to 533,836. Gódávari fell into a state even more miserable than that of the Northern Circars generally at that time, and at length Sir Henry Montgomery was deputed to take charge of the district as Special Commissioner1[1] and to report what could be done to raise it from its lamentable state of depression. His report, as has already (p. 80) been seen, resulted in the construction of the anicut at Dowlaishweram, which changed the whole face of the delta and delivered it from any future fear of famine. No general distress has been experienced since it was built. Even the great famine of 1876-78 did not seriously affect this district, and men and cattle fled to it then in large numbers from the famine-stricken tracts in Kurnool, Bellary and Nellore.2[2]
In 1896-98 failure of the monsoons caused a good deal of suffering throughout the Agency, especially in Bhadráchalam and Pólavaram. Indeed the jungle people were perhaps harder hit by this famine than by that of 1833. The Rev. J. Cain of Dummagúdem describes a conversation with an old man who remembered the latter, and who compared the two by saying, 'There were fewer of us then, and the forests had not been cut down, and there were plenty of roots.'
In 1896 Bhadráchalam and Yellavaram suffered from short rainfall, but a remission of 50 per cent, of the dry assessment was sufficient to enable the ryots to last out till the end of the year 1896-97, and no relief was necessary.
Things were much worse in the following year. The south-west monsoon stopped on the l8th June, and distress amounting to famine in Bhadráchalam, and verging upon famine in Pólavaram, was the result. Yellavaram and Chódavaram had rather more rain, and in these all that was needed was to assist for a short time a few aged or infirm people, who could not support themselves and had no one to maintain them. In Pólavaram and Bhadráchalam it was necessary to open
