POPUI ATION
77
tinued to be the capital, but a few years later Rājmahāl was made the
seat of government. The very site of Tanda is now unknown, though
it seems to have been an important place for about a hundred years
after the depopulation of Gaur; in its neighbourhood was fought the
decisive battle in which prince Shujā was defeated by the generals of
Aurangzeb in 1660. The East India Company established a factory
at Malda as early as 1676, by the side of a Dutch factory already in
existence there. In 1683, when it was visited by William Hedges
(who spent a day in exploring the ruins of Gaur), the number of factors
was three'. In 1770 English Bazār was fixed upon for a Commercial
Residency, and continued to be a place of importance until the discon-
tinuance of the Company's private trade ; the fortified structure which
was originally used as the Residency is now occupied by the courts
and public offices. As an administrative unit the District only came
into existence in 1813, when, in order to secure a closer magisterial
supervision, various police circles were detached from the Districts
of Rājshāhi, Dinājpur, and Purnea and placed in charge of a joint-
Magistrate and Deputy-Collector stationed at English Bāząr. A
separate treasury was first opened in 1832, but it was not till 1859 that
a Magistrate-Collector was appointed to the District. Anomalies
remained in the revenue, criminal, and civil jurisdiction which were
not adjusted till 1875, and since that time there have been only a
few unimportant transfers of jurisdiction. In 1905 the District was
transferred from the Bhāgalpur Division of Bengal to the Rājshāhi
Division of Eastern Bengal and Assam.
Mālda is considered less unhealthy than the adjoining Districts of
Purnea, Dinājpur, and Rājshāhi ; but it is very malarious, especially
in the undrained swamps between Gaur and the
Mahānandā, and in the jungly tract to the east. Population.
Malarial fever generally breaks out on the cessation of the rains ; and
in six years out of the ten ending igoo it was one of the six Dis-
tricts in Bengal from which the highest fever mortality was reported;
in 1899 it headed the list with a recorded mortality from fever of 41-7
per 1,ooo. Cholera is often rife, and a specially bad outbreak occurred
in 1899 in English Bāzār.
The population has risen from 677,328 in 1872 to 711,487 in 1881,
to 814,919 in 1891, and to 884,030 in 1901. It is thus growing rapidly
in spite of the unhealthy conditions prevailing, and the density in 1901
was 466 persons per square mile. The increase during the decade
ending with that year amounted to 82 per cent., being greatest in the
Gājol and Old Malda thānas in the Bārind, where Santals are settling
in large numbers ; this tract is still, however, the least densely popu
lated part of the District. In the Kaliachak and Sibganj thdnas in the
' Hedges's Diary, vol. i, pp. 87-9
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