Maihar to Jubbulpore in 1829 and
1830, and another, eighty-six miles long, from Jhansi Ghat on the
Nerbudda to Chaka. The trees planted were banyan, pipal, mango,
tamarind, and jaman (_Eugenia jambolana_). He remarks that these
trees will last for centuries.

14. 'In 1899-1900 Malwa suffered from a severe famine, such as had
not visited this favoured spot for more than thirty years. The people
were unused to, and quite unprepared for, this calamity, the distress
being aggravated by the great influx of immigrants from Rajputana,
who had hitherto always been sure of relief in this region, of which
the fertility is proverbial. In 1903 a new calamity appeared in the
shape of plague, which has seriously reduced the agricultural
population in some districts' (_I.G._, 1908, xvii. 105).

CHAPTER 63

Cities and Towns, formed by Public Establishments, disappear as
Sovereigns and Governors change their Abodes.

On the 17th and 18th,[1] we went on twenty miles to Palwal,[2] which
stands upon an immense mound, in some places a hundred feet high,
formed entirely of the debris of old buildings. There are an immense
number of fine brick buildings in ruins, but not one of brick or
stone at present inhabited. The place was once evidently under the
former government the seat of some great public establishments,
which, with their followers and dependants, constituted almost the
entire population. The occasion which keeps such establishments at a
place no sooner passes away than the place is deserted and goes to
ruin as a matter of course. Such is the history of Nineveh,
Babylon,[3] and all cities which have owed their origin and support
entirely to the public establishments of the sovereign--any
revolution that changed the seat of government depopulated a city.

Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador of James the First of England to the
court of Delhi during the reign of Jahangir, passing through some of
the old capital cities of Western India, then deserted and in ruins,
writes to the Archbishop of Canterbury: 'I know not by what policy
the Emperors seek the ruin of all the ancient cities which were nobly
built, but now be desolate and in rubbish. It must arise from a wish
to destroy all the ancient cities in order that there might appear
nothing great to have existed before their time.'[4] But these
cities, like all which are supported in the same manner, by the
residence of a court and its establishments, become deserted as the
s