Page 64 - Muzaffargarh Gazzetteer

been properly maintained or checked with the result that both were obsolete
long before the new settlement. Owing to the number of palms it was
impossible to incorporate them in the ordinary record of rights but mangoes
were not very numerous.

At last settlement, the statements regulating the labour to be supplied by
each landowner for the maintenance of the canal were prepared but, since
the old system by which labour was supplied by the users of water had been
abandoned, the document was unnecessary.
Assessment Circles
The assessment circles, as a rule, correspond to natural divisions of
cultivation, and no change in them was either possible or desirable. In each
of the four tehsils there was an Indus circle, in which cultivation depended
mainly upon the flood from the river. In the Layyah Tehsil, this circle was
subdivided into Kacha and Pacca of which the former was the portion of the
riverain tract which got flood direct from the river; the latter was the area to
the east of the largest creeks, and in a usual year received spill from them,
and not from the main river. This division into two circles was scarcely
necessary, but was unobjectionable, and its retention was convenient. In
Muzaffargarh and Alipur the estates which depended on the flood from the
Chenab were grouped into Chenab circles. The Thal Kalan of Layyah and the
Chahi Thal of Kot Addu were the unirrigated estates, which were pastoral
rather than agricultural. The Jandi Thal of Layyah was distinguished from
them by its greater fertility, crops of a better class and the dependence of its
inhabitants on tillage rather than on flocks. The Pacca circles of the three
southern tehsils consisted of the estates protected from direct river flood and
irrigated by the inundation or weir controlled canals.
The Nahri Thal of Kot Addu was a small circle of estates to which canal
irrigation was extended between the first and second settlement; its eastern
border was Chahi, and could hardly be distinguished from the adjoining
Chahi Thal. On the west, it merged into the canal irrigated Pacca; in the
middle were strips of cultivation separated from one another by sand hills.
Most of the circles were the property of rich landowners who were developing
it rapidly. The adjoining circle across the Muzaffargarh border was the Thal
circle, of which about half the estates could not be distinguished from their
neighbours in the Pacca, though in the remaining half sand hills were high
and plentiful, and the wild vegetation was that of the Thal, and not of the
riverain.
The only circle which had been abolished was the old Chahi Sailab of the
south of the Tehsil Alipur Tehsil. At Settlement, irrigation from the Suleman
was very uncertain, and the whole of the Tehsil south of Jatoi and Alipur was
liable to be swept by floods from the Indus. The set of the river was by then
towards the west, the protective embankment had been improved and the
irrigation from the Suleman was usually plentiful and timely so that,
although the crops grown were inferior to those of the middle of the Tehsil,

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