February 5, 1850.—­Kurrunpoor Mirtaha, ten miles over a plain of fine muteear soil, scantily cultivated, but bearing excellent spring crops where it is so.  Not far from our last camp at Gokurnath, we entered a belt of jungle three miles wide, consisting chiefly of stunted, knotty, and crooked sakhoo trees, with underwood and rank chopper grass.  This belt of jungle is the same we passed through, as above described, between Poknapoor and Gokurnath.  It runs from the great forest to the north, a long way down south-east, into the Khyrabad district.  From this belt to our present ground, six miles, the road passes over a fine plain, nine-tenths of which is covered with this grass, but studded with mango-groves and fine single trees.  The forest runs along to the north of our road—­which lay east—­from one to three miles distant, and looked very like a continued mango-grove.  The level plain of rich soil extends up through the forest to the foot of the hills, and is all the way capable of the finest cultivation.  Here and there the soil runs into light doomuteea; and in some few parts even into bhoor, in proportion as the sand abounds; but generally the soil is the fine muteear, and very fertile.  The whole plain is said to have been in cultivation thirty years ago, when Hakeem Mehndee held the contract; but the tillage has been falling off ever since, under the bad or oppressive management of successive contractors.

The estate through which we have been passing is called Bharwara, and contains the sites of nine hundred and eighty-nine villages, about one-tenth of which are now occupied.  The landholders are all of the Ahbun Rajpoot tribe; but a great part of them have become Musulmans.  They live together, however, though of different creeds, in tolerable harmony; and eat together on occasions of ceremony, though not from the same dishes.  No member of the tribe ever forfeited his inheritance by changing his creed.  Nor did any one of them, I believe, ever change his creed, except to retain his inheritance, liberty, or life, threatened by despotic and unscrupulous rulers.  They dine on the same floor, but there is a line marked off to separate those of the party who are Hindoos from those who are Musulmans.  The Musulmans have Mahommedan names, and the Hindoos Hindoo names; but both still go by the common patronymic name of Ahbuns.  The Musulmans marry into Musulman families, and the Hindoos into Hindoo families of the highest castes, Chouhans, Rathores, Rykwars, Janwars, &c.  Of course all the children are of the same religion and caste as their parents.  They tell me that the conversion of their ancestors was effected by force, under a prince or chief called “Kala Pahar.”  This must have been Mahommed Firmally, alias Kala Pahar—­to whom his uncle Bheilole, King of Delhi, left the district of Bahraetch as a separate inheritance a short time before his death, which took place A.D. 1488.  This conversion seems to have had the effect of doing away with the murder of female infants in the Ahbun families who are still Hindoos; for they could not get the Musulman portion of the tribe to associate with them if they continued it.