Lalta Sing, of the Nikomee Rajpoot tribe, whom I had lately an opportunity of assisting, for his good services in arresting outlays [outlaws ?] from our territories, has just been to pay his respects.  Our next encamping ground is to be on his estate of Kurheya and Para.  He tells me that very few families of his tribe now destroy their female infants; that tradition ascribes the origin of this evil to the practice of the Mahommedan emperors of Delhi of demanding daughters in marriage from the Rajpoot princes of the country; that some of them were too proud to comply with the demand, and too weak to resist it in any other way than that of putting all their female infants to death.  This is not impossible.  He says that he believes the Dhankuries, whom I have described above to be really the only tribe of Rajpoots among whom no family destroys its infant daughters in Oude; that all tribes of Rajpoots get money with the daughters they take from tribes a shade lower in caste, to whom they cannot give theirs in return; and pay money with the daughters they give in marriage to tribes a shade higher, who will not give their daughters to them in return.  The native collector of Shahabad, a gentlemanly Mahommedan, came out two miles to pay his respects on my approach, and we met on a large space of land, lying waste, while all around was covered with rich crops.  I asked, “Pray why is this land left waste?” “It is, sir, altogether unproductive.”  “Why is this?  It seems to me to be just as good as the rest around, which produces such fine crops.”  “It is called khubtee—­slimy, and is said to be altogether barren.”  “I assure you, sir,” said Rajah Bukhtawar Sing, “that it is good land, and capable of yielding good crops, under good tillage, or it would not produce the fine grass you see upon it.  You must not ask men like this about the kinds and qualities of soils for they really know nothing whatever about them:  they are city gentlemen’s sons, who get into high places, and pass their lives in them without learning anything but how to screw money out of such as we are, who are born upon the soil, and depend upon its produce all our lives for subsistence.  Ask him, sir, whether either he or any of his ancestors ever knew anything of the difference between one soil and another.”

The collector acknowledged the truth of what the old man said, and told me that he really knew nothing about the matter, and had merely repeated what the people told him.  This is true with regard to the greater part of the local revenue officers employed in Oude.  “One of these city gentlemen, sir,” said.  Bukhtawar Sing, “when sent out as a revenue collector, in Saadut Allee’s time, was asked by his assistants what they were to do with a crop of sugar-cane which had been attached for balances, and was becoming too ripe, replied, ’Cut it down, to be sure, and have it stacked!’ He did not know that sugar-cane must, as soon as cut, be taken to the mill, or it spoils.”  “I