the treatment she received, he made her enter into written engagements to pay to the troops, in liquidation of their arrears of pay, all that he pretended that she owed to the State.  He prevailed upon Ghuffoor Beg, who commanded the artillery, to take these her pledges, and give him, Wajid Allee, corresponding receipts for the amount, for transmission to the Treasury; and then made her over a prisoner to him.  Ghuffoor Beg took possession of the lady and the estate, kept her in close confinement, and employed his artillery-men in making the collections in their own way, by appropriating all the harvests to themselves.

Wajid Allee was superseded in October 1849, by Aga Allee, who, on entering on his charge, directed that martial-law should cease in Muneearpoor; but Ghuffoor Beg and his artillery-men were too strong for the governor, and refused to give up the possession of so nice an estate.  When I approached the estate in my tour, Ghuffoor Beg took the lady off to Chundoly, where she was treated with all manner of indignity and cruelty by the artillery.  The estate was going to utter ruin under their ignorant and reckless management, and the Nazim, Aga Allee, prayed me to interpose and save it, and protect the poor Lady Sogura.  I represented the hardship of the case to the Durbar, but with little hope of any success, under the present government, who say, that if the troops are not allowed to pay themselves in this way, they shall have to pay them all the arrears for which the estate is pledged, not one rupee of which is reduced by the collections they make.  If they were to hold the estate for twenty years, they would not allow it to appear that any portion of the arrears had been paid off.  The estate is a noble one, and, in spite of all the usurpations and disorders from which it has lately suffered, was capable last year of yielding to Government a revenue of fifty thousand rupees a-year, after providing liberally for all the requirements of the poor Lady Sogura and her family, or a rent-roll of one hundred thousand rupees a-year.

December 19, 1849.—­Shahgunge, distance twelve miles.  This town is surrounded by a mud wall, forty feet thick, and a ditch three miles round, built thirty years ago, and now much out of repair.  It belongs to the family of Rajah Bukhtawar Sing.  The wall, thirty feet high, was built of the mud taken from the ditch, in which there is now some six or seven feet of water.  The wall has twenty-four bastions for guns, but there is no platform, or road for guns, round it on the inside.  A number of respectable merchants and tradesmen reside in this town, where they are better protected than in any other town in Oude.  It contains a population of between twenty and thirty thousand persons.  They put thatch over the mud walls during the rains to preserve them.  The fortifications and dwelling-houses together are said to have cost the family above ten lacs of rupees.  There are some fourteen old guns in the