This request was complied with; and, on paying a fee of five thousand rupees, he got the dress of investiture, and offered it to Lieutenant Orr, a very gallant officer, the second in command of Captain Barlow’s corps, as the only way to render the corps so efficient as he required it to be.  The Durbar took away the two regiments; but, as soon as they heard that Lieutenant Orr was to command the third, they appointed Fidda Hoseyn, brother of the ruffian Mahommed Hoseyn, who had held the district of Mahomdee, and done so much mischief to it.  Fidda Hoseyn, of course, paid a high sum for the command to be exacted from his subordinates, or the people of the district in which it might be employed; and the regiment has remained worse than useless.  Of the eleven guns, five are useless on the ground, and without bullocks.  The bullocks for the other six are present, but too weak to draw anything.  They had had no grain for many years; but within the last month they have had one-half seer each per day out of the one seer and half paid for by Government.  There is no ammunition, stores, or anything else for the guns, and the best of the carriages are liable to fall to pieces with the first discharge.  They are not allowed to repair them, but must send them in to get them changed for others when useless.  The Durbar knows that if they allow the local officers to charge for the repair of guns, heavy charges will be made, and no gun ever repaired; and the local officers know that if they send in a gun to be repaired at Lucknow, they will get in exchange one painted to look well, but so flimsily done up that it will go to pieces the first or second time it is fired.

Captain Barlow’s corps is a good one, and the men are finer than any that I have seen in our own infantry regiments, though they get only five rupees a-month each, while ours get seven.  They prefer this rate under European officers in the Oude service, to the seven rupees a-month which sipahees get in ours, though they have no pension establishment or extra allowance while marching.  They feel sure that their European commandants will secure them their pay sooner or later; they escape many of the harassing duties to which our sipahees are liable; they have leave to visit their homes one month in twelve; they never have to march out of Oude to distant stations, situated in bad climates; they get fuel and fodder, and often food, for nothing; their baggage is always carried for them at the public cost.  But to secure them their pay, arms, accoutrements, clothing, &c., the commandant must be always about the Court himself, or have an ambassador of some influence there at great cost.  Captain Barlow is almost all his time at Court, as much from choice as expediency, drawing all his allowances and emoluments of all kinds, while his second in command performs his regimental duties for him.  The other officers like this, because they know that the corps could not possibly be kept in the state it is without it.  Captain Barlow has lately obtained three thousand rupees for the repair of his six gun-carriages, tumbrils, &c., that is, five hundred for each.  They had not been repaired for ten years; hardly any of the others have been repaired for the last twenty or thirty years.