I saw at Agra Mirza Kam Baksh, the eldest son of Sulaiman Shikoh, the eldest son of the brother of the present Emperor.  He had spent a season with us at Jubbulpore, while prosecuting his claim to an estate against the Raja of Riwa.  The Emperor, Shah Alam, in his flight before our troops from Bengal (1762), struck off the high road to Delhi at Mirzapore, and came down to Riwa, where he found an asylum during the season of the rains with the Riwa Raja, who assigned for his residence the village of Makanpur.[3] His wife, the Empress, was here delivered of a son, the present Emperor, of Hindustan, Akbar Shah;[4] and the Raja assigned to him and his heirs for ever the fee simple of this village.  As the members of this family increased in geometrical ratio, under the new system, which gave them plenty to eat with nothing to do, the Emperor had of late been obliged to hunt round for little additions to his income; and in his search he found that Makanpur gave name to a ‘pargana’, or little district, of which it was the capital, and that a good deal of merchandize passed through this district, and paid heavy dues to the Raja.  Nothing, he thought, would be lost by trying to get the whole district instead of the village; and for this purpose he sent down Kam Baksh, the ablest man of the whole family, to urge and prosecute his claim; but the Raja was a close, shrewd man, and not to be done out of his revenue, and Kam Baksh was obliged to return minus some thousand rupees, which he had spent in attempting to keep up appearances.

The best of us Europeans feel our deficiencies in conversation with Muhammadans of high rank and education, when we are called upon to talk upon subjects beyond the everyday occurrences of life.  A Muhammadan gentleman of education is tolerably acquainted with astronomy, as it was taught by Ptolemy; with the logic and ethics of Aristotle and Plato; with the works of Hippocrates and Galen, through those of Avicenna, or, as they call him, Abu-Alisina;[5] and he is very capable of talking upon all subjects of philosophy, literature, science, and the arts, and very much inclined to do so; and of understanding the nature of the improvements that have been made in them in modern times.  But, however capable we may feel of discussing these subjects, or explaining these improvements in our own language, we all feel ourselves very much at a loss when we attempt to do it in theirs.  Perhaps few Europeans have mixed and conversed more freely with all classes than I have; and yet I feel myself sadly deficient when I enter, as I often do, into discussions with Muhammadan gentlemen of education upon the subject of the character of the governments and institutions of different countries—­their effects upon the character and condition of the people; the arts and the sciences; the faculties and operations of the human mind; and the thousand other things which are subjects of everyday conversation among educated and thinking; men in our country.  I feel that