lessees of villages the privilege of planting them
themselves, or permitting others to plant them; but where they held
their leases for a term of only five years, of course they would be
unwilling to plant them. They might lose their lease when the term
expired, or forfeit it before; and the successor would have the land
on which the trees stood, and would be able to exclude the public, if
not the proprietor, from the enjoyment of any of their advantages.
Our Government has, in effect, during the thirty-five years that it
has held the dominion of the North-Western Provinces,[6] prohibited
the planting of mango groves, while the old ones are every year
disappearing. On the resumption of rent-free lands, even the ground
on which the finest of these groves stand has been recklessly
resumed, and the proprietors told me that they may keep the trees
they have, but cannot be allowed to renew them, as the lands are
become the property of Government. The lands of groves that have been
the pride of families for a century and a half have been thus
resumed. Government is not aware of the irreparable mischief they do
the country they govern by such measures.[7]

On my way back from Meerut, after the conversation already related
with the farmer of a small village (_ante_, chapter 58, text at [7]),
my tents were one day pitched, in the month of December, amidst some
very fine garden cultivation in the district of Aligarh;[8] and in
the evening I walked out as usual to have some talk with the
peasantry. I came to a neighbouring well at which four pair of
bullocks were employed watering the surrounding fields of wheat for
the market, and vegetables for the families of the cultivators. Four
men were employed at the well, and two more in guiding the water into
the little embanked squares into which they divide their fields.

I soon discovered that the most intelligent of the four was a Jat;
and I had a good deal of conversation with him as he stood landing
the leather buckets, as the two pair of bullocks on his side of the
well drew them to the top, a distance of forty cubits from the
surface of the water beneath.

'Who built this well?' I began.

'It was built by one of my ancestors, six generations ago.'

'How much longer will it last?'

'Ten generations more, I hope; for it is now just as good as when
first made. It is of 'pakka' bricks without mortar cement.'[9]

'How many waterings do you give?'

'If there should be no rai