Oel was transferred to the Huzoor Tuhseel in 1834, Kymara in 1836, and Mahewa in 1839.  These Rajpoot landholders do not often seize upon the lands of a relative at once, but get them by degrees by fraud and collusion with Government officers, so that they may share the odium with them.  They instigate these officers to demand more than the lands can pay; offer the enhanced rate, and get the lands at once; or get a mortgage, run up the account, and foreclose by their aid.  They no sooner get the estate than they reduce the Government demand, by collusion or violence, to less than what the former proprietor had paid.

March 9, 1850.—­Lahurpoor, twelve miles, over a plain of doomuteea soil, well studded with groves and single trees, but not so fully cultivated the last half way as the first.  For the first halfway the road lies through the estate of Anrod Sing, of Oel; but for the last it runs through that of Seobuksh Sing, a Gour Rajpoot, who has a fort near the town of Kuteysura, five miles from Lahurpoor, and seven from Oel.  It is of mud, and has a ditch all round, and a bamboo-fence inside the outer walls.  It is of great extent, but not formidable against well-provided troops.  The greater part of the houses in the town are in ruins, and Seobuksh has the reputation of being a reckless and improvident landholder.  He is said not only to take from his tenants higher rates of rent than he ought, but to extort from them very often a property tax, highly and capriciously rated.  This is what the people call the bhalmansae, of which they have a very great abhorrence.  “You are a bhala manus” (a gentleman, or man of substance), he says to his tenant, “and must have property worth at least a thousand rupees.  I want money sadly, and must have one-fifth:  give me two hundred rupees.”  This is what the people call “bhalmansae,” or rating a man according to his substance; and to say that a landlord or governor does this, is to say that he is a reckless oppressor, who has no regard to obligations or to consequences.

There are manifest signs of the present landholder, Seobuksh Sing, being of this character; but others, not less manifest, of his grandfather having been a better man, in the fine groves which surround Lahurpoor, and the villages between this place and Kuteysura, all of which are included in his estate.  These groves were, for the most part, planted during the life of his grandfather by men of substance, who were left free to-dispose of their property as they thought best.

All the native gentlemen who rode with me remarked on the beauty of the approach to Lahurpoor, in which a rich carpet of spring crops covers the surface up to the groves, and extends along under the trees which have been recently planted.  There are many young groves about the place, planted by men who have acquired property by trade, and by the savings out of the salaries and perquisites of office at Lahurpoor, which is the