e the soil admits of tillage.
There is a good deal that requires drainage, and still more that is
too poor to be tilled without great labour and outlay in irrigation,
manure, &c. The villages are, however, much nearer to each other than
in any other part of the country that we have passed over; and the
lands, close around every village, are well cultivated. The
landholders and cultivators told me, that the heavy rain we have had
has done a vast deal of good to the crops; and, as it has been
followed by a clear sky and fine westerly wind, they have no fear of
the blight which might have followed had the sky continued cloudy,
and the winds easterly. Certainly nothing could look better than the
crops of all kinds do now, and the people are busily engaged in
ploughing the land for sugar-cane, and for the autumn crops of next
season.

I had some talk with the head zumeendar of Naraenpoor about midway.
He is of the Ditchit family of Rajpoots, who abound in the district
we have now entered. We passed over the boundary of Byswara, about
three miles from our last encampment, and beyond that district there
are but few Rajpoots of the Bys clan. These Ditchits give their
daughters in marriage to the Bys Rajpoots, but cannot get any of
theirs in return. Gunga Sing, the zumeendar, with whom I was talking,
told me that both the Ditchits and Byses put their infant daughters
to death, and that the practice prevailed more or less in all
families of these and, he believed, all other clans of Rajpoots in
Oude, save the Sengers.* I asked him whether it prevailed in his own
family, and he told me that it did, more or less, as in all others. I
bade him leave me, as I could not hold converse with a person guilty
of such atrocities, and told him that they would be all punished for
them in the next world, if not in this.

[* The Sengers are almost the only class of Rajpoots in Bundelkund,
and Boghilcund, Rewa, and the Saugor territories, who used to put
their female infants to death; and here, in Oude, they are almost the
only class who do not.]

Rajah Bukhtawar Sing, who was on his horse beside my elephant, said,
"They are all punished in this world, and will, no doubt, be punished
still more in the next. Scarcely any of the heads of these landed
aristocracy are the legitimate sons of their predecessors; they are
all adopted, or born of women of inferior grade. The heads of
families who commit or tolerate such atrocities become leprous,