Lucknow

LUCKNOW (liik'now), a city, district and division of Brit ish India. The city was the capital of Oudh from 1775 until merged in the United Provinces in 190 1. Pop. (1931) 274,659. It lies mainly on the right bank of the winding river Gumti. East of the city the Civil Lines stretch for a distance of over 2 TM ; and then comes a fine, well laid-out cantonment with a substantial civil population and accommodation for troops of all arms. It is the headquarters of the 8th division of the Indian Army.

Lucknow is a place of parks, gardens and imposing monuments, though most of the latter are of inferior architecture and material. It shares with Allahabad the position of the headquarters of the government of the United Provinces, and has a residence for the Governor; it is also the seat of the Chief Court of Oudh, and of the provincial legislature. It has a university of its own, with the Canning College, and a number of others. The Medical Col lege is the finest in north India, and the adjoining hospital was erected on the most modern design at a cost of over £250,000. The Colvin School is intended for the education, on British public school lines, of the sons of the taluqdars or large landlords of Oudh ; and a picturesque building, known as La Martiniere, takes Anglo-Indian boys and is partly supported by an endowment left by General Claude Martin in 1800. There are several important industrial establishments, chiefly paper mills, printing presses and metal works; but the city as a whole swarms with the decayed families of the hangers-on of the overgrown court of the old Oudh kingdom. The chief indigenous industries are gold and silver brocades, muslins, embroidery, brass and copper ware, pottery and moulding in clay, and vessels and ornaments in beaten silver. Lucknow being an important railway centre, there are large work shops; and it was one of the first of the towns in Upper India to be supplied with electricity.

The Residency.

Among the events of the Mutiny of 1857 the defence of the Lucknow Residency comes, in historic interest, only second to the tragedy of Cawnpore. The name "residency" is now applied not only to the residency itself, but to the whole of the outbuildings and entrenchments in which Sir Henry Lawrence concentrated his small force. These entrenchments covered almost 6o acres of ground, and consisted of a number of detached houses, public edifices, outhouses and casual buildings, netted together, and welded by ditches, parapets, stockades and batteries into one connected whole. On the summit of the plateau stands the shell of the residency proper, the official residence of the chief commis sioner, a lofty building three storeys high, with a fine portico. Near the residency comes the banqueting hall, and beyond the Baillie Guardgate lie the ruins of the surgeon's house, where Sir Henry Lawrence died of a shell-wound, and where the ladies of the garri son were sheltered in underground rooms. Round the line of the entrenchments are pillars marked with the name of the various "posts" into which the garrison was distributed. The most danger

ous of these was the Cawnpore battery post, where the stockade was directly exposed to the enemy's fire. The mutineers had rifles fixed in rests in the house opposite, and swept the road that led through the residency enclosure at this point. Close to the resi dency is the Lawrence Memorial, an artificial mound 3o ft. high crowned by a marble cross.

Other Monuments.

Among the other buildings of interest in Lucknow is the Imambara, which is one of the largest rooms in the world (162 by 54 'ft.), having an arched roof without sup ports. This room was built by the Nawab Asaf-ud-dowlah in 1784, to afford relief to the famine-stricken people. The many monu ments of his reign include his country palace of Bibiapur, outside the city. Among later buildings are the two palaces of Chhattar Manzil, erected for the wives of Ghazi-ud-din Haidar (1814) and now used as a club ; the remains of the Farhat Baksh, dating from the previous reign, and adjoining the greater Chhattar Manzil ; the observatory (now a bank) Of Nasir-ud-din Haidar (1827) ; the imambara or mausoleum and the unfinished great mosque (Jama Masjid) of Mohammed Ali Shah (1837), and the huge de based Kaisar Bagh, the palace of Wajid Ali Shah (1847-1856), now divided up into residences for the chief taluqdars.

The DISTRICT OF LUCKNOW lies on both sides of the river Gumti, and has an area of 967 sq.m. Its general aspect is that of an open champaign, well studded with villages, finely wooded and in parts most fertile and highly cultivated. In the vicinity of rivers, however, stretch extensive barren sandy tracts (bhiir), and there are many wastes of saline efflorescence (user). The country is an almost dead level, the average slope, which is from north-west to south-east, being less than a foot per mile. The principal rivers are the Gumti and the Sai with their tributaries. The population in 1931 was 787,472.

The DIVISION OF LUCKNOW contains the western half of the old province of Oudh. It comprises the six districts of Lucknow, Unao, Sitapur, Rae Bareli, Hardoi and Kheri. Its area is 12,040 sq.m. and its population in 1931 was LUcON, a town of western France, in the department of Vendee, 23 m. S.E. of La Roche-sur-Yon, on the railway from Nantes to Bordeaux, and on the canal of Lucon (9 m. long), which affords communication with the sea in the Bay of Aiguillon. Pop. (1931) 6,122. Between Lucon and the sea stretch marshy plains, the bed of the former gulf, partly drained by numerous canals, and in the reclaimed parts yielding excellent pasturage, while in other parts are productive salt-marshes, and ponds for the rearing of mussels and other shell-fish. Lucon is the seat of a bishopric, established in 1317, and held by Richelieu from 1607 to 1624. The cathedral, 12th-century and later, was origi nally an abbey church. The cloisters are of the late 15th century. Near by is the bishop's palace, possessing a large theological library. There is an ecclesiastical seminary here.