twelve lacs of rupees,
or two millions sterling a-year; while the Oude Government draws from
the half of its territories which it reserved only one-half that sum,
or one crore of rupees.

Maun Sing is to leave my camp to-day, and return to Shahgunge. Of the
fraud and violence, abuse of power, and collusion with local
authorities, by which he and his father seized upon the lands of so
many hundreds of old proprietors, there can be no doubt; but to
attempt to make the family restore them now, under such a government,
would create great disorder, drive off all the better classes of
cultivators, and desolate the face of the country, which they have
rendered so beautiful by an efficient system of administration. Many
of the most powerful of the landed aristocracy of Oude have acquired,
or augmented, their estates in the same manner and within the same
time; and the same difficulty would attend the attempt to restore the
old proprietors in all parts. A strong and honest government might
overcome all these difficulties, and restore to every rightful
proprietor the land unjustly taken from him, within a limited period;
but it should not attempt to enforce any adjustment of the accounts
of receipts and disbursements for the intervening period. The old
proprietor would receive back his land in an improved condition, and
the usurper might fairly be considered to have reimbursed himself for
all his outlay. The old proprietor should be required to pledge
himself to respect the rights of all new tenants.

_December_ 24, 1849.--Meranpoor, twelve miles. Soil between this and
Sultanpoor neither so fertile nor so well cultivated, as we found it
on the other side of the Goomtee river, though it is of the same
denomination--generally doomut, but here and there mutear. The term
mutear embraces all good argillaceous earth, from the light brown to
the black, humic or ulmic deposit, found in the beds of tanks and
lakes in Oude. The natives of Oude call the black soil of Malwa and
southern India, and Bundlekund, _muteear_. This black soil has in its
exhausted state abundance of silicates, sulphates, phosphates, and
carbonates of alumina, potassa, lime, &c., and of organic acids,
combined with the same unorganic substances, to attract and fix
ammonia, and collect and store up moisture, and is exceedingly
fertile and strong.

Both saltpetre and common salt are made by lixiviation from some of
the poor oosur soils; but, from the most barren i