It is an error to suppose that a soil, even of pure sand, must be absolutely barren.

Quartz-sand commonly contains some of the inorganic substances necessary to plants-- silica, lime, potash, alumina, oxide of iron, magnesia, &c .-- and they are rendered soluble, and fit for the use of plants by atmospheric air and water, impregnated with carbonic-acid gas, as all water is more or less.

The only thing required from the hand of man, besides water, to render them cultivable, is vegetable or animal substances, to supply them, as they decay or decompose, with organic acids.
The late Hakeem Mehndee, took the contract of the Mahomdee district, as already stated, in the year A.D.1804, when it was in its present bad state, at 3,11,000 rupees a-year; and he held it till the year 1819, or for sixteen years.

He had been employed in the Azimgurh district, under Boo Allee Hakeem, the contractor; and during the negotiations for the transfer of that district, with the other territories to the British Government, which took place in 1801; he lost his place, and returned to Lucknow, where he paid his court to the then Dewan, or Chancellor of the Exchequer, who offered him the contract of the Mahomdee district, at three lacs and eleven thousand rupees a-year, on condition of his depositing in the Treasury a security bond for thirty-two thousand rupees.

There had been a liaison between him and a beautiful dancing-girl, named Peeajoo, who had saved a good deal of money.