I asked the Brahmin cultivator why all these offerings were required to be made by cultivators in particular?  He replied, “There is, sir, no species of tillage in which the lives of numerous insects are not sacrificed, and it is to atone for these numerous murders, and the ingratitude to Bhurt, that cultivators, in particular, are required to make so many offerings;” and, he added, “much sin, sir, is no doubt brought upon the land by the murder of so many female infants.  I believe, sir, that all the tribes of Rajpoots murder them; and I do not think than one in ten is suffered to live.  If the family or village priest did not consent to eat with the parents after the murder, no such murders could take place, sir; for none, even of their nearest relatives, will ever eat with them till the Brahmin has done so.”

The bearers of the tonjohn in which I sat, said, “We do not believe, sir, that one girl in twenty among the Rajpoots is preserved.  Davey Buksh, the Gonda Rajah, is, we believe, the only one of the Biseyn Rajpoot tribe who preserves his daughters;* his father did the same, and his sister, who was married to the Bhudoreea Rajah of Mynpooree, came to see him lately on the occasion of a pilgrimage to Ajoodheea, on the death of her husband; of the six Kulhuns families of Chehdwara, two only preserve their daughters—­Surnam Sing of Arta, and Jeskurn of Kumeear; but whether their sons or successors in the estates will do the same is uncertain.”  These bearers are residents of that district.

[* There are a great many families of the Biseyn Rajpoots who never destroy their infant daughters.]

I may here remark, that oak-trees in the hills of the Himmelah chain are disfigured in the same manner, and for the same purpose, as the peepul and banyan trees are here; their small branches and leaves are torn off to supply fodder for bullocks and other animals.  The ilex of the hills has not, however, in its nakedness the majesty of the peepul and banyan of the plains, though neither of them can be said to be “when unadorn’d, adorn’d the most.”

January 31, 1850.—­Puchgowa, north-east, twelve miles over a plain of doomuteea soil, a good deal of which is out of tillage at present.  On the road we came through several neat villages, the best of which was occupied exclusively by the families of the Kunojeea Brahmin proprietors, and the few persons of inferior caste who ploughed their lands for them, as they are a shade too high in caste to admit of their holding their own ploughs.  They are, however, very worthy people, and seemed very much pleased at being put so much at their ease in a talk with the great man about their own domestic and rural economy.  They told me, that they did not permit Rajpoots to reside in or have anything to do with their village.