e Palee and Mahomdee
districts we crossed about four miles from our present encampment.
This district, of Mahomdee was taken in contract by Hakeem Mehndee,
at three lacs and eleven thousand rupees a-year, in 1804 A.D., and in
a few years he brought it into full tillage, and made it yield above
seven lacs. It has been falling off ever since it was taken from him,
and now yields only between three and four lacs. The jungle is
studded with large peepul-trees, which are all shorn of their small
branches and leaves. The landholders and cultivators told me that
they were taken off by the cowherds who grazed their buffaloes,
bullocks, and cows in these jungles; that they formed their chief
and, in the cold season, their best food, as the leaves of the
peepul-tree were supposed to give warmth to the stomach, and to
increase the quantity of the milk; that the cowherds were required to
pay nothing for the privilege of grazing their cattle in these
jungles, by the person to whom the lands belonged, because they
enriched the soil with their manure, and all held small portions of
land under tillage, for which they paid rent; that they had the free
use of the peepul-trees in the jungles, but were not permitted to
touch those on the cultivated lands and in villages.

White ants are so numerous in the argillaceous muteear soil, in which
their food abounds, that it is really dangerous to travel on an
elephant, or _swiftly_ on horseback, over a new road cut or enlarged
through any portion of it that has remained long untilled. The two
fore legs of my elephant went down yesterday morning into a deep pit
made by them, but concealed by the new road, which has been made over
it for the occasion of my visit near Shahabad, and it was with some
difficulty that he extricated them. We have had several accidents of
the same kind since we came out. In cutting a new road they cut
through large ant-hills, and leave no trace of the edifices or the
gulf below them, which the little insects have made in gathering
their food and raising their lofty habitation. They are not found in
the bhoor or oosur soils, and in comparatively small numbers in the
doomuteea or lighter soil, but they abound In the muteear soil in
proportion to its richness. Cultivation, where the crops are
irrigated, destroys them, and the only danger is in passing over new
roads cut through jungle, or lands that have remained long untilled,
or along the sides of old pathways, from whic