in Oude means as long as the grantee may have the power or influence to be useful to the granters, or to retain the grants.  Since that time the Kumpureeas have recovered all the lands they had lost, restored all the jungle that had been cut down, and they are now more powerful than ever.  They have strengthened their old forts and built some new, and added greatly to the number of their armed followers, so that the governor of the district dares not do anything to coerce them into the payment of the just demands of Government, or to check their usurpations and outrages.*

[* This Nourouz Allee was, 1851, the agent of the Kumpureea barons of this jungle, at the Durbar, where he has made, in the usual way, many influential friends, in collusion with whom he has seized upon many estates in the vicinity of the jungle, and had them made over to these formidable barons.]

The present Nazim has with him two Nujeeb Regiments, one of nine hundred and fifty-five, and the other of eight hundred and thirty men; a squadron of horse and fourteen guns.  The two corps are virtually commanded by fiddlers and eunuchs at Court.  Of the men borne on the muster rolls and paid, not one-half are present; of the number present, not one-half are fit for the duties of soldiers; and of those fit for such duties, not one-half would perform them.  They get nominally four rupees a-month, liable to numerous deductions, and they are obliged to provide their own clothing, arms, accoutrements, and ammunition, except on occasions of actual fighting, when they are entitled to powder and ball from the Government officer under whom they are employed.  He purchases powder in the bazaars, or has it sent to him from Lucknow; and, in either case, it is not more than one-third of the strength used by our troops.  It is made in villages and supplied to contractors, whose only object is to get the article at the cheapest possible rate; and that supplied to the most petted corps is altogether unfit for service.

The arms with which they are expected to provide themselves are a matchlock and sword.  They are often ten or twelve months in arrears, and obliged to borrow money for their own subsistence and that of their families, at twenty-four per cent. interest.  If they are disabled, they have little chance of ever recovering the arrears of pay due to them; and if they are killed, their families have still less.  Even the arms and accoutrements which they have purchased with their own money are commonly seized by the officers of Government, and sold for the benefit of the State.  Under all these disadvantages, the Nazim tells me that he thinks it very doubtful whether any of the men of the two corps would fight at all on emergency.  The cavalry are still worse off, for they have to subsist their horses, and if any man’s horse should be disabled or killed, he would be at once dismissed with just as little chance of recovering the arrears of pay due to him.  Of the fourteen