Near the border, we passed one village, Mahommedpoor, entirely in ruins.  After some search we found a solitary man of the Pausee tribe, who told us that it had been held for many generations by the family of Rugonath, a Gouree Rajpoot, who paid for it at an uniform rate of six hundred rupees a-year.  About three years ago the contractor demanded from him an increased rate, which he could not pay.  Being sorely pressed, he fled to the jungles with the few of his clan that he could collect, and ordered all the cultivators to follow his fortunes.  They were of a different clan—­mostly Bagheelas—­and declined the honour.  He urged that, if they followed him for a season or two, the village would be left untilled, and yield nothing to the contractor, who would be constrained to restore him to possession at the rate which his ancestors had paid; that his family had nothing else to depend upon, and if they did not desert the land and take to the jungles and plunder with him, he must, of necessity, plunder them.  They had never done so, and would not do so now.  He attacked and plundered the village three times, killed three men, and drove all the rest to seek shelter and employment in other villages around.  Not a soul but himself, our informant, was left, and the lands lay waste.  Rogonath Sing rented a little land in the village of Gouree, many miles off, and in another district, still determined to allow no man but himself to hold the village or restore its tillage and population.  This, said the Pausee, is the usage of the country, and the only way in which a landholder can honestly or effectually defend himself against the contractor, who would never regard his rights unless he saw that he was prepared to defend them in this way, and determined to involve all under him in his own ruin, depopulate his estate, and lay waste his lands.

Meean Almas, after whom this place, Meeangunge, takes his name, was an eunuch.  He had a brother, Rahmut, after whom the town of Rahmutgunge, which we passed some days ago, took its name.  Meean Almas was the greatest and best man of any note that Oude has produced.  He held for about forty years this and other districts, yielding to the Oude Government an annual revenue of about eighty lacs of rupees.  During all this time he kept the people secure in life and property, and as happy as people in such a state of society can be; and the whole country under his charge was, during his life-time, a garden.  He lived here in a style of great magnificence, and was often visited by his sovereign, who used occasionally to spend a month at a time with him at Meeangunge.  A great portion of the lands held by him were among those made over to the British Government, on the division of the Oude territory, by the treaty of 1801, concluded between Saadut Allee Khan and the then Governor-General Lord Wellesley.