Half-way we came through a neat village, the lands of which are subdivided between the members of a large family of Kunojee Brahmins, who came out to see us pass, and pay their respects.  The cultivation was so fine that I hoped they were of the class who condescended to hold their own ploughs.  I asked them; and they, with seeming pride, told me that they did not—­that they employed servants to hold their ploughs for them.  When I told them that this was their misfortune, they seemed much amused, but were all well-behaved and respectful, though they must have thought my notion very odd.

The little Gurra flows from the Oude Tarae forest by the town of Phillibheet, where boats are built, to be taken down to Cawnpoor, on the Ganges, for sale.  About four hundred, great and small, are supposed to be taken down the Gurra every year, in the season of the rains.  They take down the timber of the Tarae forest, rice, and other things; and all are sold, with their cargoes, at Cawnpoor, or other places on the Ganges.  The timbers are floated along on both sides of the boats.  Palee is a good place for a cantonment, or seat of public civil establishments, and Shahabad is no less so.  The approach to both, from the south-east, is equally beautiful, from the rich crops which cover the ground up to the houses, and the fine groves and majestic single trees which surround them.

Shahabad is a very ancient and large town, occupied chiefly by Pathan Mussulmans, who are a very turbulent and fanatical set of fellows.  Subsookh Rae, a Hindoo, and the most respectable merchant in the district, resided here, and for some time consented to officiate, as the deputy of poor old Hafiz Abdoollah, for the management of the town, where his influence was great.  He had lent a good deal of money to the heads of some of the Pathan families of the town, but finding few of them disposed to repay, he was last year obliged to refuse further loans.  They determined to take advantage of the coming mohurrum festival to revenge the affront as men commonly do who live among such a fanatical community.  The tazeeas are commonly taken up, and carried in procession, ten days after the new moon is first seen, at any place where they are made; but in Oude all go by the day in which the moon is seen from the capital of Lucknow.  As soon as she is seen at Lucknow, the King issues an order throughout his dominions for the tazeeas to be taken in procession ten days after.  The moon was this year, in November, first seen on the 30th of the month at Lucknow; but at Shahabad, where the sky is generally clearer, she had been seen on the 29th.  The men to whom Subsookh Rae had refused farther loans determined to take advantage of this incident to wreak their vengeance; and when the deputy promulgated the King’s order for the tazeeas to be taken in procession ten days after the 30th, they instigated all the Mahommedans of the town to insist upon taking them out ten days