ide of Morowa, would be good for a
cantonment, as the soil is sandy, and the plain well drained. Water
must lie during the rains on all the other sides, and the soil has
more clay in it.]

_January_ 7, 1850.--To Mirree, twelve miles, over a plain of light
doomuteea soil, sufficiently cultivated, and well studded with trees.
We passed Runjeet-ka Poorwa half-way--once a large and populous town,
but now a small one. The fog was, however, too thick to admit of my
seeing it. From this place to Lucknow, thirty miles, Seetlah Buksh, a
deputy of Almas Allee Khan's, planted an avenue of the finest kind of
trees. We had to pass through a mile of it, and the trees are in the
highest perfection, and complete on both sides. I am told that there
are, however, many considerable intervals in which they have been
destroyed. The trees must have been planted about sixty years ago.

I may here remark that no native gentleman from Lucknow, save such as
hold office in districts, and are surrounded by troops, can with
safety reside in the country. He would be either suspected and
destroyed by the great landholders around him, or suspected and
ruined by the Court. Under a better system of government, a great
many of these native gentlemen, who enjoy hereditary incomes, under
the guarantee of the British Government, would build houses in
distant districts, take lands, and reside on them with their
families, wholly or occasionally, and Oude [would] soon be covered
with handsome gentlemen's seats, at once ornamental and useful. They
would tend to give useful employment to the people, and become bonds
of union between the governing and the governed. Under such an
improved system, our guarantees would be of immense advantage to the
whole country of Oude, in diffusing wealth, protection, education,
intelligence, good feeling, and useful and ornamental, works. At
present, these guarantees are not so. They have concentrated at the
capital all who subsist upon them, and surrounded the Sovereign and
his Court with an overgrown aristocracy, which tends to alienate him
more and more from his people. The people derive no benefit from, and
have no feeling or interest in common with, this city aristocracy,
which tends more and more to hide their Sovereign from their view,
and to render him less and less sensible of his duties and high
responsibilities; and what would be a blessing under a good, becomes
an evil under a bad system, such as that which has pre