Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c22.7

c22.7

Ramanakapettah, has much better buildings than Noozeed. The streets are very broad, and the houses, in the fashion of the natives, good and large. A Choultry, one of the best I have seen in the Circars is in the middle of the village, and a fine large tank near it, to the south affords one of the greatest comforts to the inhabitants. The nearest of the hills, are to the eastward; and forms a kind of amphitheatre, opening to the southward. In this lies the village and all the iron mines. Before the famine,(The reference is evidently to the famine of 1790-2 which reduced the population of the Noozeed Zemindary from 1,00,374 in 1786 to 57,865 at the end of 1793. (See report from Noozeed Committee: Proceedings, Madras Board of Revenue, 16.1.1794),—Editor.) there were besides 40 smelting furnaces, a great number of silver and copper smiths, here, who were in a state of affluence; but their survivors are now poor and in a wretched situation.