[* Moorlee Monowur, a very respectable agricultural capitalist, tells me, that all that his younger brother, Seetaram, told me, about the suttee, if strictly true, and can be proved by a reference to the poor woman’s husband and sons, who still survive, and to the people of Bilwa and Lasoora.]

I asked the Amil, “How he fed, clothed, and lodged his prisoners?” He said, “We always take them with us in our marches, secured in stocks or fetters.  We cannot leave them behind, because we have no gaols or other places to keep them in, and require all our troops to move with us.  As to food and clothing, they are obliged to provide themselves, or get their families or friends to provide them, for Government will not let us charge anything for their subsistence and clothing in the accounts.”

“I understand that you and all other public servants who have charge of prisoners not only make them provide themselves with food and clothing, but make them pay for lamp-oil, whether they have a lamp burning at night or not?”—­“When they require a lamp they must of course pay for it, sir; prisoners are always a source of much anxiety to us, for if we send them to Lucknow, they are almost sure to be let out soon, on occasions of thanksgiving, or on payment of gratuities, and enabled to punish all who have assisted us in the arrest; and with hosts of robbers around us, we are always in danger of an attempt to rescue them, which may cost us many lives.”  “If the gaol darogahs at Lucknow had not the power to sell his prisoners, sir,” said Bukhtawar Sing, “how should he be able to pay so much as he does for his place?  He is obliged to pay five hundred rupees or more for his place, and is not sure of holding it a month after he has bought it, so many are the candidates for a place so profitable!” “But he gets a share of the subsistence money, paid for the prisoners from the Treasury, does he not?”—­“Yes, sir; of the four pice a-day paid for them by the King, he takes two, and sends them to beg through the city for what more they require.”  “If they get more than what he thinks they require from the public or their friends, he takes the surplus from them, I am told?”—­“It is very true, sir, I believe.  Fellows, sir, who have no substantial friends, and cannot and will not beg, soon sink under this scanty supply of food.”

February 27, 1850—­Sutrick, sixteen miles west, over a plain of muteear soil, tolerably well cultivated, and very well studded with trees of the finest kinds, single, in clusters and in groves.  The mango-trees are in blossom, and promise well.  The trees are said to bear only one season out of three, but some bear in one season, and others in another, so that the market is always supplied, though in some seasons more abundantly than in others.  A cloudy sky and easterly wind, while the trees are in blossom, are said to be very injurious.  A large landholder told me that they never took a tax upon any of the trees, not even the mhowa-trees, but