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10
AN EARLY HISTORY OF ORISSA
slowly reach the sea. These are alike disastrous to the people and costly to the State.
LAKES :-(i) Chilka Lake
The Chilka Lakel is a shallow inland sea situated in the extreme south of the district of Puri and extending into the district of Ganjam. It is separated from the Bay of Bengal by a group of two islands formed by silt deposit and by a long strip of land, which for miles consists of nothing but a sandy ridge little more than 200 yards wide. It communicates with the Bay, by a narrow inlet through the sandy bar constantly thrown up by the sea--an inlet which in some years has to be kept open by artificial means. On the south-west, it is walled by lofty hills in some places descending abruptly to be water's edge and in others thrusting out gigantic arms and promotories of rock into the lake. On the south, it is bounded by hilly watershed which forms the natural frontier between Orissa and Madras. To the north, it loses itself in endless shallows, sedgy banks and islands, just peeping above the surface formed year by year from the silt which the Daya and other streams bring down. Thus hemmed between the mountains and the sea, the Chilka spreads itself out into a peer-shaped expanse of water 44 miles long of which the northern half has a mean breadth of 20 miles, while the southern half tapers into an irregularly curved point barely about five miles wide.
Its area fluctuates with the season, with the intensity and duration of the annual river floods, and with the ebb and flow of the tide. It is returned at 344 sq. miles in the dry weather and about 450 sq. miles during the rainy 1. The account is based on the District Gazeteer, Puri by L.Ş.8,
O’malley, I.C S, Calcutta, 1908, pp. 3-6,
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