half of artillery.  To do our duty honestly by Oude, we ought to restore the regiment of infantry; and in the place of the corps of light, send one of irregular cavalry.  We ought also to restore the company and half of artillery and eight guns which have been withdrawn.  We draw annually from the lands ceded to as in 1801, for the protection which we promised to the King and his people from “all internal and external enemies,” no less than two crores and twelve lacs of rupees, or two millions sterling a-year; while the Oude Government draws from the half of its territories which it reserved only one-half that sum, or one crore of rupees.

Maun Sing is to leave my camp to-day, and return to Shahgunge.  Of the fraud and violence, abuse of power, and collusion with local authorities, by which he and his father seized upon the lands of so many hundreds of old proprietors, there can be no doubt; but to attempt to make the family restore them now, under such a government, would create great disorder, drive off all the better classes of cultivators, and desolate the face of the country, which they have rendered so beautiful by an efficient system of administration.  Many of the most powerful of the landed aristocracy of Oude have acquired, or augmented, their estates in the same manner and within the same time; and the same difficulty would attend the attempt to restore the old proprietors in all parts.  A strong and honest government might overcome all these difficulties, and restore to every rightful proprietor the land unjustly taken from him, within a limited period; but it should not attempt to enforce any adjustment of the accounts of receipts and disbursements for the intervening period.  The old proprietor would receive back his land in an improved condition, and the usurper might fairly be considered to have reimbursed himself for all his outlay.  The old proprietor should be required to pledge himself to respect the rights of all new tenants.

December 24, 1849.—­Meranpoor, twelve miles.  Soil between this and Sultanpoor neither so fertile nor so well cultivated, as we found it on the other side of the Goomtee river, though it is of the same denomination—­generally doomut, but here and there mutear.  The term mutear embraces all good argillaceous earth, from the light brown to the black, humic or ulmic deposit, found in the beds of tanks and lakes in Oude.  The natives of Oude call the black soil of Malwa and southern India, and Bundlekund, muteear.  This black soil has in its exhausted state abundance of silicates, sulphates, phosphates, and carbonates of alumina, potassa, lime, &c., and of organic acids, combined with the same unorganic substances, to attract and fix ammonia, and collect and store up moisture, and is exceedingly fertile and strong.