I should here mention, that all the Telinga regiments, fourteen in number, are allowed tents and hackeries to carry them.  The way in which the bullocks of such carts are provided with fodder has been already mentioned; but no tents or conveyance of any kind are allowed for the Nujeeb corps, thirty-two in number.  Whenever they move (and they are almost always moving), they seize whatever conveyance and shelter they require from the people of the country around.  Each battalion, even in its ordinary incomplete state, requires four hundred or five hundred porters, besides carts, bullocks, horses, ponies, &c.  Men, women, and children, of all classes, are seized, and made to carry the baggage, arms, accoutrements, and cages of pet birds, belonging to the officers and sipahees of these corps.  They are stripped of their clothes, confined, and starved from the time they are seized; and as it is difficult to catch people to relieve them along the road, they are commonly taken on two or three stages.  If they run away, they forfeit all their clothes which remain in the hands of the sipahees; and a great many die along the road of fatigue, hunger, and exposure to the sun.  Numerous cruel instances of this have been urged by me on the notice of the King, but without any good effect.  The line of march of one of these corps is like the road to the temple of Juggurnaut!  When the corps is about to move, detachments are sent out to seize conveyance of all kinds; and for one cart required and taken, fifty are seized, and released for a donation in proportion to their value, the respectability of the proprietors, and the necessity for their employment at home at the time.  The sums thus extorted by detachments they share with their officers, or they would never be again sent on such lucrative service.

It appears that in this part of Oude the people have not for many years suffered so much from the depredations of the refractory landholders as in other parts; and that the desolate state of the district arises chiefly from the other three great evils that afflict Oude—­the rack-renting of the contractors; the divisions they create and foster among landholders; and the depredations of the troops and camp-followers who attend them.  But the estate has become much subdivided, and the shareholders from this cause, and the oppression of the contractors, have become poor and weak; and the neighbouring landholders of the Janwar and other Rajpoot tribes have taken advantage of their weakness to seize upon a great many of their best villages.  Out of Kurumpoor, within the last nine years, Anorud Sing, of Oel, a Janwar Rajpoot, in collusion with local authorities, has taken twelve; and Umrao Sing, of Mahewa, of the same tribe, has taken eighteen, making twenty villages from the Kurumpoor division.  These landholders reside in the Khyrabad district, which adjoins that of Mahomdee, near our present camp.