of the Artillery—­Sobha Sing’s regiment—­ Foraging System—­Peasantry follow the fortunes of their refractory Landlords—­No provision for the king’s soldiers, disabled in action, or for the families of those who are killed—­Our sipahees, a privileged class, very troublesome in the Byswara and Banoda districts—­Goorbukshgunge—­Man destroyed by an Elephant—­Danger to which keepers of such animals are exposed—­Bys Rajpoots composed of two great families, Sybunsies and Nyhassas—­Their continual contests for landed possessions—­Futteh Bahader—­Rogonath Sing—­Mahibollah the robber and estate of Balla—­Notion that Tillockchundee Bys Rajpoots never suffer from the bite of a snake—­Infanticide—­Paucity of comfortable dwelling-houses—­The cause—­Agricultural capitalists—­ Ornaments and apparel of the females of the Bys clan—­Late Nazim Hamid Allee—­His father-in-law Fuzl Allee—­First loan from Oude to our Government—­Native gentlemen with independent incomes cannot reside in the country—­Crowd the city, and tend to alienate the Court from the people.

December 29, 1849.—­Ten miles to Rampoor.  Midway we passed over the border of the Sultanpoor district into that of Salone, whose Amil, Hoseyn Buksh, there met us with his cortege.  Rampoor is the Residence of Rajah Hunmunt Sing, the tallookdar of the two estates of Dharoopoor and Kalakunkur, which extend down to and for some miles along the left bank of the river Ganges.  There is a fort in each of these estates, and he formerly resided in that of Dharoopoor, four miles from our present encampment.  That of Kalakunkur is on the bank of the Ganges.  The lands along, on both sides the road, over which we are come, are scantily cultivated, but well studded with good trees, where the soil is good for them.  A good deal of it is, however, the poor oosur soil, the rest muteear, of various degrees of fertility.  The territory of Oude, as I have said above, must once have formed part of the bed of a lake,* which contained a vast fund of soluble salts.  Through this bed, as the waters flowed off, the rivers from the northern range of hills, which had before fed the lake, cut their way to join the larger stream of the Ganges; and the smaller streams, which have their sources in the dense forest of the Tarae, which now extends along the southern border of that range, have since cut their way through this bed in the same manner to the larger rivers.  The waters from these rivers percolate through the bed; and, as they rise to the surface, by the laws of capillary attraction, they carry with them these salts in solution.  As they reach the surface in dry weather, they give off by evaporation pure water; and the salts, which they held in solution, remain behind in the upper surface.  The capillary action goes on; and as the pure water is taken off in the atmosphere in vapour, other water impregnated with more salts comes up to supply its place; and the salts near the surface either accumulate or are supplied to the roots of the plants, shrubs, or trees, which require them.