ng the same. This would be a great
evil in any country, but is terrible in Oude, where no police is
maintained for the protection of life and property. The cases of
atrocious murders and robberies which come before me every day, and
are acknowledged by the local authorities, and neighbours of the
sufferers, to have taken place, are frightful. Such sufferings, for
which no redress is to be found, would soon desolate any part of
India less favoured by nature.

In the valley of the Nerbudda, for instance, such sufferings would
render a district desolate for ages. The people, driven off from an
estate, go and settle in another better governed. The grass grows
rankly from the richness of the soil, and the humidity of the air,
and becomes filled with deer and other animals, that are food for
beasts of prey. Tigers, leopards, wolves, wild dogs, &c. follow, to
feed upon them; and they render residence and industry unsafe.
Malaria follows, and destroys what persons the tigers leave. I have
seen extensive tracts of the richest soil and most picturesque
scenery, along the banks of the Nerbudda, which had been rendered
desolate for ages by the misrule of only a few years. It is the same
in the Tarae forest, which separates Oude from Nepaul. But in the
rest of Oude, from the Ganges to this belt of forest, no such effects
follow misrule, however great and prolonged. Here no grass grows too
rankly, few deer fill it, few tigers, leopards, wolves, or wild dogs
come in pursuit of them, and no malaria is feared. If a landholder
takes to rebellion and plunder, he is followed by all his retainers
and clansmen; and their families, and the cultivators of other
classes, feeling no longer secure, go and till lands on other
estates, till they are invited back. The cowherds and shepherds, who
live by the produce of their cattle and sheep, remain and thrive by
the abundance of pasture lands, from which the rich spring and
harvest crops have disappeared. These cattle and sheep graze over
them, and enrich the soil by restoring to it a portion of those
elements of fertility, of which a long succession of harvests had
robbed it. Over and above what they leave on the grounds, over which
they graze, large stores of manure are collected for future use by
the herdsmen, who now exclusively occupy the villages. The landholder
and his followers, in the meantime, subsist and enrich themselves by
the indiscriminate plunder of the surrounding country; and are