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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 5, p. 405.

HISTOR Y 405 The climate is on the whole healthy, being very dry. The Javadis, however, are malarious at certain periods of the year. The low country is hot, but never unbearably so, while the elevated tract on the west shares the cooler temperatures of the adjoining Mysore plateau. Tem- perature is not officially recorded at any station. The annual rainfall of the whole District for thirty years ending with I899 averaged 37 inches. But owing to the many ranges and hills, which sometimes collect and sometimes divert the rain-bearing clouds, it varies greatly in different parts. The driest tract is that above the Ghats, where the fall is only 31 inches. In the neighbouring Chandra- giri taluk it is 33 inches. In the centre of the District, however, the fall increases to 39 and on the east to 40 inches. Speaking generally, the south-west monsoon is more copious than the north-east on the plateau and in the centre of the District, and the north-east than the south-west in the east, where the country is nearer to the Bay of Bengal and less shut out from currents driving inland. Cyclonic storms are not uncommon, usually occurring in May or October at the change of the monsoon. They do not ordinarily cause much damage. The most destructive occurred on May 2, 1872, when Vellore chiefly suffered. Extensive floods took place in November, 1903, when, owing to the breaching of some large tanks in Mysore within the upper catchment basin of the Palar, that river overflowed its banks and did a great deal of damage. Ambur suffered severely, as did also several villages on either bank of the river in both the Vellore and Gudiyattam taluks. The anicut (irrigation dam) across the 'Palar near Arcot was very badly breached, and 44 lakhs has been spent in repairing it. Historically, from the earliest times of which anything is known down to the close of the ninth century A. D., the District formed part of the territory of the Pallavas, whose capital was at Conjeeveram in Chingleput District. During the succeeding centuries, it passed successively under the sway of the Cholas of Uraiyir, the Rashtrakuta dynasty of MMalkhed, the great Chola king Rajarajja Deva of Tanjore, and the Hindu rulers of Vijayanagar. These last were overthrown by the Musalmans of the Deccan in I565 at the battle of Talikota, and the country fell into the power of the Sultans of Bijapur and Golconda. The last nominal kings of the Vijayanagar line lived for some years at CHANDRAGIRI In I687 the emperor Aurangzeb sent his general Zulfikar Khan to annex the extreme South to the Mughal empire, and the District then passed under the Muhammadan Nawabs of the Carnatic, who made Arcot their head-quarters. During the next hundred years North Arcot was the scene of some of the most decisive battles in the history of Southern India. One of