hem, and sang in a very
agreeable style, I had never before seen or heard of such a band, and
was both surprised and pleased.

The great part of the wheat, gram,[3] and other exportable land
produce which the people consume, as far as we have yet come, is
drawn from our Nerbudda districts, and those of Malwa which border
upon them; and, _par consequent_, the price has been rapidly
increasing as we recede from them in our advance northward. Were the
soil of those Nerbudda districts, situated as they are at such a
distance from any great market for their agricultural products, as
bad as it is in the parts of Bundelkhand that I came over, no net
surplus revenue could possibly be drawn from them in the present
state of arts and industry. The high prices paid here for land
produce, arising from the necessity of drawing a great part of what
is consumed from such distant lands, enables the Rajas of these
Bundelkhand states to draw the large revenue they do. These chiefs
expend the whole of their revenue in the maintenance of public
establishments of one kind or other; and, as the essential articles
of subsistence, wheat and gram, &c., which are produced in their own
districts, or those immediately around them, are not sufficient for
the supply of these establishments, they must draw them from distant
territories. All this produce is brought on the backs of bullocks,
because there is no road from the districts whence they obtain it,
over which a wheeled carriage can be drawn with safety; and, as this
mode of transit is very expensive, the price of the produce, when it
reaches the capitals, around which these local establishments are
concentrated, becomes very high. They must pay a price equal to the
collective cost of purchasing and bringing this substance from the
most distant districts, to which they are at any time obliged to have
recourse for a supply, or they will not be supplied; and, as there
cannot be two prices for the same thing in the same market, the wheat
and gram produced in the neighbourhood of one of these Bundelkhand
capitals fetch as high a price there as that brought from the most
remote districts on the banks of the Nerbudda river; while it costs
comparatively nothing to bring it from the former lands to the
markets. Such lands, in consequence, yield a rate of rent much
greater compared with their natural powers of fertility than those of
the remotest districts whence produce is drawn for these markets or