A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c7.38

c7.38

Except in the immediate neighbourhood of the short rivers, the coastal strip is for the most part covered with low-level laterite, red gravel, and clay, and is therefore not very productive. But the conditions change thoroughly when the deltas of the Godāvari and Krishna are reached. With their immense quantities of water and of rich black mud drawn largely from the fertile lava of the trap area, they have created a double delta extending over a million acres round the 300 square miles of the Colair depression. The delta country is a regular granary of rice and produces many other valuable crops like tobacco, cotton and sugarcane. The coast of the delta was the site of some of the earliest settlements of Europeans in India, the Dutch, French and English having all established factories there; the channels of the rivers which led to these have since largely silted up.