The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c15.67

v1.c15.67

Five considerable cities focus the great population of the United Provinces, Allahābād, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Agra, and Benares. Allahābād is built in the angle of confluence between the Jumna and the Ganges. A hundred miles above Allahābād, on the right or south bank of the Ganges, is the city of Cawnpore, and on the opposite or north bank extends the old kingdom of Oudh, with Lucknow for its capital, situated some forty miles north-east of Cawnpore. Agra, which gives its name to all that part of the United Provinces which did not formerly belong to Oudh, is situated on the right or south bank of the Jumna, a hundred and fifty miles west of Lucknow. All these distances lie over the dead level of the plain, dusty and like a desert in the dry season, but green and fertile after the rains. Scattered over the plain are innumerable villages in which dwell nineteen out of twenty of the inhabitants of the United Provinces.