would hardly suffice to pay off these arrears.  The troops on detached duty, in the provinces with local officers, are not so much in arrears as those in and about the capital.  They are paid out of the revenues as they are collected, and their receipts sent in to the treasury.  For some good or pleasing services rendered by him to the minister this year, in the trial of offenders whom that minister wished to screen, three lacs of rupees have been paid to the mojtahid as zukaat for distribution to the poor.  This has all been appropriated by the mojtahid, the minister, and Court favourites.

The State, like individuals, is bound to pay this zukaat only when it is free from debts of all kinds.  The present King’s father was free from debt, and had his establishments always paid up; and he always paid this charity punctually.  The present King is not bound to pay it, but the high-priest, minister, and Court favourites are too deeply interested in its payment to permit its discontinuance; and the king, like a mere child in their hands, acquiesces in all they propose.  The zukaat has, in consequence, increased as the treasury has become exhausted.]

January 13, 1850.—­Russoolabad, twelve miles, over a country better peopled and cultivated than usual, where the soil admits of tillage.  There is a good deal that requires drainage, and still more that is too poor to be tilled without great labour and outlay in irrigation, manure, &c.  The villages are, however, much nearer to each other than in any other part of the country that we have passed over; and the lands, close around every village, are well cultivated.  The landholders and cultivators told me, that the heavy rain we have had has done a vast deal of good to the crops; and, as it has been followed by a clear sky and fine westerly wind, they have no fear of the blight which might have followed had the sky continued cloudy, and the winds easterly.  Certainly nothing could look better than the crops of all kinds do now, and the people are busily engaged in ploughing the land for sugar-cane, and for the autumn crops of next season.

I had some talk with the head zumeendar of Naraenpoor about midway.  He is of the Ditchit family of Rajpoots, who abound in the district we have now entered.  We passed over the boundary of Byswara, about three miles from our last encampment, and beyond that district there are but few Rajpoots of the Bys clan.  These Ditchits give their daughters in marriage to the Bys Rajpoots, but cannot get any of theirs in return.  Gunga Sing, the zumeendar, with whom I was talking, told me that both the Ditchits and Byses put their infant daughters to death, and that the practice prevailed more or less in all families of these and, he believed, all other clans of Rajpoots in Oude, save the Sengers.* I asked him whether it prevailed in his own family, and he told me that it did, more or less, as in all others.  I bade him leave me, as I could not hold converse with a person guilty of such atrocities, and told him that they would be all punished for them in the next world, if not in this.