Page:Gódávari.djvu/239

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GAZETTEER
213

there by the East India Company in 1708, was soon afterwards abandoned, but was re-established in 1722. It was captured by the French under Bussy in 1757—the garrison numbered only twenty men and no resistance was offered—but it was ceded by the Nizam to the English in 1759 after the battle of Condore. It continued as a mercantile establishment of the East India Company till 1829. Its two great qualifications as a factory were that it was situated near one of the principal mouths of the Gódávari and that very good cloth was made there. Indeed Captain Hamilton, who visited India at the beginning of the eighteenth century, stated that it produced the best and finest longcloth in all India. With the abolition of the Company's factory the prosperity of Injaram declined. It has now no sea-borne trade whatever. No traces, it is said, exist of the European settlement.

Injaram is the head-quarters of a small zamindari estate containing three villages and paying a peshkash of Rs. 2,832. It was part of the old Peddápuram zamindari and was acquired by sale by the present holders' family in 1845.

Nílapalli: An old sea-port near Yanam, on the eastern bank of the Coringa river where it joins the Gautami Gódávari. Its population is 3,936 and it contains a vernacular lower secondary school for girls. The Company established a factory here in 1751, but it was captured by Bussy in 1757. A quantity of good cloth was formerly manufactured in the neighbourhood, and a considerable sea-borne trade existed; but now the place is of little importance commercially and has no sea-borne trade at all. In it are the remains of several old bungalows once occupied by English merchants, and four English tombs ranging in date from 1807 to 1865.

Its hamlet of Georgepet, which was clearly so named by Englishmen, contains a large mill belonging to the Coringa Rice Mills Company, where about one hundred men are employed and which is in charge of two European superintendents. The rice is sent in boats to be shipped from Cocanada. The mill is said to have been started by a French engineer from Káraikkál in 1854. Before that time the buildings are said to have been used as an indigo factory.

Nílapalli is the only remaining village of the old Nílapalli proprietary mutta (created in 1802-03) which formerly contained nine other villages and paid a peshkash of Rs. 6,300. The peshkash is now only Rs. 480.

Samalkot (vernacular Chámárlakóta): Seven miles north of Cocanada, and the junction between the branch line from