I ordered the King’s wakeel to take these two brothers to the Chuckladar, and request him to see them released on their furnishing sufficient security for their future good behaviour, which they promised to produce.* They were all fine-looking men, with limbs that would do honour to any climate in the world.  These are the families from which our native regiments are recruited; and hardly a young recruit offers himself for enlistment, on whose body marks will not be found of wounds received in these contests, between landlords themselves, and between them and the officers and troops of the sovereign.  I have never seen enmity more strong and deadly than that exhibited by contending co-sharers and landholders of all kinds in Oude.  The Rajah of Bulrampoor mentioned a curious instance of this spirit in a village, now called the Kolowar village, in the Gonda district, held in copartnership by a family of the Buchulgotee tribe of Rajpoots.  One of them said he should plant sugar-cane in one of his fields.  All consented to this.  But when he pointed out the place where he should have his mill, the community became divided.  A contest ensued, in which all the able-bodied men were killed, though not single cane had been planted.  The widows and children survived, and still hold the village, but have been so subdued by poverty that they are the quietest village community in the district.  The village from that time has gone by the name of Kolowar village, from Koloo, the sugar-mill, though no sugar-mill was ever worked in the village, he believed.  He says, the villagers cherish the recollection of this fight; and get very angry when their neighbours twit them with the folly of it.

[* They were released, and have been ever since at large on security.  One of them visited me in April 1851, and said, that as a point of honour, they should abstain from joining in the fight for their rights, but felt it very hard to be bound to do so.]

In our own districts in Upper India, they often kill each other in such contests; but more frequently ruin each other in litigation in our Civil Courts, to the benefit of the native attorneys and law-officers, who fatten on the misery they create or produce.  In Oude they always decide such questions by recourse to arms, and the loss of life is no doubt fearful.  Still the people generally, or a great part of them, would prefer to reside in Oude, under all the risks to which these contests expose them, than in our own districts, under the evils the people are exposed to from the uncertainties of our law, the multiplicity and formality of our Courts, the pride and negligence of those who preside over them, and the corruption and insolence of those who must be employed to prosecute or defend a cause in them, and enforce the fulfilment of a decree when passed.