3-028-307 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Khangaon Cotton Market, West Berar, India, 1870. 'The small town of Khangaon...has become a place of great commercial importance, exporting cotton to the annual value of one million sterling...Our Engraving [shows] the Courthouse on the left, and the picturesquely-situated travellers' bungalow [right]. Unluckily, when the photograph was taken, there were only about 400 boojahs or bullock loads of cotton in the market, which is hardly more than half what may usually be seen there on a day in March. But the Illustration will serve to convey an idea of the busy scene which occurs there daily, when buyers, European and native, meet together to bargain for the loads of those carts which the ryots have brought in from the surrounding country. The entrance may be distinguished by a triumphal arch, erected by the cotton merchants of Khangaon. A prominent object is one of the three full-press factory buildings established at Khangaon - namely, that of Jules Siegfried and Co., a French firm. Here the cotton is finally pressed and closed up, not to be opened again till it has found its way probably, via the Suez Canal, to Liverpool or Havre. The Khangaon railway is now daily at work, carrying the produce of the Berars to Bombay for shipment to Europe'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.