A great many of the officers and sipahees of the King’s nujeeb and other regiments are every month discharged for mutiny, insubordination, abuse of authority, or neglect of duty, or merely to make room for men more subservient to Court favourites, or because they cannot or will not pay the demanded gratuity to a new and useless commandant appointed by Court favour.  The plunder of villages has been the daily occupation of these men during the whole period of their service, and they become the worst of this class of loose characters, ready to join any band of freebooters.  Such bands are always sure to find a patron among the landholders ready to receive and protect them, for a due share of their booty, against any force that the King’s officers may send after them; and, if they prefer it as less costly, they can always find a manager of a district ready to do the same, on condition that they abstain from plundering within his jurisdiction.  The greater part of the land is, however, cultivated, and well cultivated under all this confusion and consequent insecurity.  Tillage is the one thing needful to all, and the persons from whom trespasses on the crops are most apprehended are the reckless and disorderly trains of Government officials.

February 16, 1850.—­Biswa, eighteen miles east, over a plain of excellent soil, partly doomut, but chiefly mutteear, well studded with trees and groves, scantily cultivated for the half of the way, but fully and beautifully for the second half.  The wheat beginning to change colour as it approaches maturity, and waving in the gentle morning breeze; intervening fields covered with mixed crops of peas, gram, ulsee, teora, surson, mustard, all in flower, and glittering like so many rich parterres; patches here and there of the dark-green arahur and yellow sugar-cane rising in bold relief; mango-groves, majestic single trees, and clusters of the graceful bamboo studding the whole surface, and closing the distant horizon in one seemingly-continued line of fence—­the eye never tires of such a scene, but would like now and then to rest upon some architectural work of ornament or utility to aid the imagination in peopling it.

The road for the last six miles passes through the estate of Nawab Allee, a Mahommedan landholder, who is a strong man and a good manager and paymaster.  His rent-roll is about four hundred thousand rupees a-year, and he pays Government about one hundred and fifty thousand.  His hereditary possession was a small one, and his estate has grown to the present size in the usual way.  He has lent money in mortgage and foreclosed; he has given security for revenue due to Government by other landholders, who have failed to pay, and had their estates made over to him; he has given security for the appearance, when called for, of others, and, on their failing to appear (perchance at his own instigation), had their lands made over to him by the Government authorities, on condition