pay. Being
sorely pressed, he fled to the jungles with the few of his clan that
he could collect, and ordered all the cultivators to follow his
fortunes. They were of a different clan--mostly Bagheelas--and
declined the honour. He urged that, if they followed him for a season
or two, the village would be left untilled, and yield nothing to the
contractor, who would be constrained to restore him to possession at
the rate which his ancestors had paid; that his family had nothing
else to depend upon, and if they did not desert the land and take to
the jungles and plunder with him, he must, of necessity, plunder
them. They had never done so, and would not do so now. He attacked
and plundered the village three times, killed three men, and drove
all the rest to seek shelter and employment in other villages around.
Not a soul but himself, our informant, was left, and the lands lay
waste. Rogonath Sing rented a little land in the village of Gouree,
many miles off, and in another district, still determined to allow no
man but himself to hold the village or restore its tillage and
population. This, said the Pausee, is the usage of the country, and
the only way in which a landholder can honestly or effectually defend
himself against the contractor, who would never regard his rights
unless he saw that he was prepared to defend them in this way, and
determined to involve all under him in his own ruin, depopulate his
estate, and lay waste his lands.

Meean Almas, after whom this place, Meeangunge, takes his name, was
an eunuch. He had a brother, Rahmut, after whom the town of
Rahmutgunge, which we passed some days ago, took its name. Meean
Almas was the greatest and best man of any note that Oude has
produced. He held for about forty years this and other districts,
yielding to the Oude Government an annual revenue of about eighty
lacs of rupees. During all this time he kept the people secure in
life and property, and as happy as people in such a state of society
can be; and the whole country under his charge was, during his life-
time, a garden. He lived here in a style of great magnificence, and
was often visited by his sovereign, who used occasionally to spend a
month at a time with him at Meeangunge. A great portion of the lands
held by him were among those made over to the British Government, on
the division of the Oude territory, by the treaty of 1801, concluded
between Saadut Allee Khan and the then Governor-General Lord
Well