The first impetus to the town of Cocanada was given by the silting up of Coringa bay and the consequent decline of Coringa as a port and dockyard. Cocanada gradually took its place. A second impulse was given during the American Civil War (1861), when the town suddenly rose into great importance as a place of shipment for the cotton pressed at Guntúr.
Cocanada is the head-quarters of the Canadian Baptist Mission and contains a Roman Catholic church and convent. In the Protestant church is perhaps the finest organ in the Presidency outside Madras City. It was built from private subscriptions, of which a large portion was given by Messrs. Simson Bros., about twenty years ago. A cemetery near the Collector's house contains some old European tombs, the earliest of which is dated 1825 and a list of which is in the Collector's office. In the Jagannáthapuram cemetery are many more graves, the oldest of which is a monument to a Dutch family the members of which were buried between 1775 and 1778, From the latter of these years up to 1859 the churchyard does not seem to have been used, but from that year onwards the burials have been numerous.
Of the industrial concerns in the town, the Local Fund workshops (near the Collector's office) have been referred to in Chapter VI. The town also contains three rice mills and five printing presses. Of the latter, only two (one called the Sujana Ranjani press and one managed by Messrs. Hall, Wilson & Co.) are of any importance. The latter prints general matter and the former Telugu books, and a weekly newspaper and a monthly magazine called respectively the Ravi and Sávitri. In another press a monthly magazine called Sarasvati is printed. There are also about a dozen native factories which each employ several handpresses for making castor oil.
The vernacular name of the town, Kákináda, is supposed to have some connection with the phenomenal number of crows which live in it. A merchant recently opened his rice godowns to trap these marauding birds, and then, closing the doors, had the intruders killed. No fewer than 978 were accounted for in one morning in this way, but without sensible diminution of the nuisance.
Coringa (vernacular Kórangi) : Nearly ten miles south of Cocanada. Population 4,258. It contains a travellers' bungalow, a native rest-house, a police-station and the offices of a deputy tahsildar who is also a sub-registrar. It was once one of the greatest ports and ship-building centres on this coast; but, owing to the silting up of the channel which leads
