The Toolseepoor estate extends along from east to west for about one hundred miles, in a belt of from nine to twelve miles wide, upon the southern border of that part of the Oude Tarae forest which we took from Nepaul in 1815, and made over to the Oude Government by the treaty of the 11th May 1816, in lieu of the one crore of rupees which our Government borrowed from Oude for the conduct of that war.  The rent-roll of Toolseepoor is now from two to three lacs of rupees a-year; but it pays to the Oude Government a revenue of only one lac and five thousand, over and above gratuities to influential officers.  The estate comprises that of Bankee, which was held by a Rajah Kunsa.  Dan Bahader, the father of the present Rajah of Toolseepoor, attacked him one night in 1832, put him and some two hundred and fifty of his followers and family to death, and absorbed the estate.  Mahngoo, the brother of Kunsa, escaped and sought redress from the Oude Durbar; but he had no money and could get no redress; and, in despair, he went off to seek employment in Nepaul, and died soon after.  Dan Bahader, enriched by the pillage of Bankee, came to Lucknow, and purchased permission to incorporate Bankee with his old estate of Toolseepoor.

Khyreeghur and Kunchunpoor, on the western border of that forest, were made over by us to Oude at the same time, as part of the cession.  They had been ceded to our Government by the treaty of 1801, at an estimated value of two hundred and ten thousand, but, up to 1816, they had never yielded to us fifty thousand rupees a-year.  They had, however, formerly yielded from two to three lacs of rupees a-year to the Oude Government, and under good management may do so again; but, at present, Oude draws from them a revenue of only sixteen thousand, and that with difficulty.  The rent-roll, however, exceeds two hundred thousand, and may, in a few years, amount to double that sum, as population and tillage are rapidly extending.

The holders of Khyreegur and Kunchunpoor are always in a state of resistance against the Oude Government, and cannot be coerced into the payment of more than their sixteen thousand rupees a-year; and hundreds of lives have been sacrificed in the collection of this sum.  The climate is so bad that no people from the open country can venture into it for more than four months in the year—­from the beginning of December to the end of March.  The Oude Government occasionally sends in a body of troops to enforce the payment of an increased demand during these four months.  The landholders and cultivators retire before them, and they are sure to be driven out by the pestilence, with great loss of life, in a few months; and the landholders refuse to pay anything for some years after, on the ground that all their harvests were destroyed by the troops.  The rest of the Tarae lands ceded had little of tillage or population at that time, and no government could be less calculated than that of Oude to make the most of its capabilities.