The test of first-rate preparation for the seed is that a ghurra, or earthen pitcher, full of water, let fall upon the field from a man’s head, shall not break.  The clods in the muteear soil are so pulverised only in the fields that are to be irrigated, or to the surface of which moisture rises from below as the weather becomes warm.  The people say that it does so rise when required in land even a good way from the forest, and that the clods are, in consequence, not necessary to retain it.  This is the only part of India in which I have known the people take ratoon, or second crops of sugar-cane from the same roots; and the farmers and cultivators tell me that the second crop is almost as good as the first.  The fields in tillage are well supplied with manure, which is very abundant where so large a portion of the surface is waste; and affords such fine pasture.  They are also well watered, for the water is near the surface, and in the tight muteear soil a kutcha well, or well without masonry, will stand good for twenty seasons.  To make pucka-wells, or wells lined with burnt bricks and cement, would be costly.  Each well of this kind costs about one hundred rupees.  The kutcha-wells, which are lined with nothing, or with thick ropes of twigs and straw, cost only from five to ten rupees.  The people tell me that oppression and poverty have made them less fastidious than they were formerly; that formerly it was considered disgraceful to plough with buffaloes, or to use them in carts, but they are now in common use for both purposes; that vast numbers of the Kunojee Brahmins and others, who could not formerly drive their own ploughs, drive them now; and that all will in time condescend to do so, as the penalties of higher payments with and for daughters in marriage cease to be exacted from men whose necessities have become so pressing.

March 6, 1850. **—­Halted at Kurunpoor, where the gentlemen of my camp shot some floricans, hares, partridges, and a porcupine along the bank of the small river Ole, which flows along from north-west to south-east within three miles of Kurunpoor.

[** Transcriber’s Note:  The diary date jumps from the previous entry of February 5, 1850, at Kurrunpoor.  This is a mistake in the date, as at the start of Chapter V the diary jumps back to February 14, 1850.]

March 7, 1850.—­Teekur, twelve miles.  The road, for three miles, lay through grass jungle to the border of the Khyrabad district, whence the plain is covered with cultivation, well studded with trees, clusters of bamboos, and well peopled with villages, all indicating better management.  A great many fields are reduced to the fine dust above described to receive the sugar-cane, which is planted in February.  The soil is muteear, but has in many parts become impaired by over-cropping.  The people told me that the crops were not so rich as they ought to be, from the want of manure, which is much felt here,