December 20, 1849.—­Saleepoor, ten miles.  The country, on both sides of the road, well studded with trees, hamlets, and villages, and well cultivated and peopled.  The landholders and peasantry seem all happy and secure under their present masters, the brother and son of the late Dursun Sing.  They are protected by them from thieves and robbers, the attacks of refractory barons, and, above all, from the ravages of the King’s troops; and the whole face of the country, at this season, is like that of a rich garden.  The whole is under cultivation, and covered with the greatest possible variety of crops.  The people showed us, as we passed, six kinds of sugar-cane, and told us that they had many more, one soil agreeing best with one kind, another with another.  The main fault in the cultivation of sugar-cane is here, as in every other part of India that I have seen, the want of room and the disregard of cleanliness.  They crowd the cane too much, and never remove the decayed leaves, and sufficient air is never admitted.

Bukhtawar Sing has always been considered as the head of the family to whom Shahgunge belongs, but he has always remained at Court, and left the local management of the estate and the government of the districts, placed under their charge in contract or in trust, to his brothers and nephews.  Bukhtawar Sing has no child of his own, but he has adopted Maun Sing, the youngest son of his brother, Dursun Sing, and he leaves all local duties and responsibilities to him.  He is a small, slight man, but shrewd, active, and energetic, and as unscrupulous as a man can be.  Indeed old Bukhtawar Sing himself is the only member of the family that was ever troubled with scruples of any kind whatever; for he is the only one whose boyhood was not passed in the society of men in the every-day habit of committing with impunity all kinds of cruelties, atrocities, and outrages.  There is, perhaps, no school in the world better adapted for training thoroughbred ruffians (men without any scruple of conscience, sense of honour, or feeling of humanity) than the camp of a revenue-contractor in Oude.  It has been the same for the last thirty years that I have known it, and must continue to be the same as long as we maintain, in absolute sway over the people, a sovereign who never bestows a thought upon them, has no feeling in common with them, and can never be persuaded that his high office imposes upon him the obligation to labour to promote their good, or even to protect them against the outrage and oppression of his own soldiers and civil officers.  All Rajah Bukhtawar Sing’s brothers and nephews were bred up in such camps, and are thorough-bred ruffians.