The Bulrampoor Rajah, Ramdut Pandee, the banker, and Rajah Bukhtawar Sing, rode with me this morning.  The Rajah of Bulrampoor is an intelligent and pleasing young man.  He was a child when Mr. Ravenscroft was killed, but said he had heard, that the Bhinga chief had suffered for the share which he had had in the murder; his body swelled, and he died within a month or two.  “If men’s bodies swelled for murder, my friend,” I said, “we should have no end of swelled bodies in Oude, and among the rest, that of Prethee Put’s, of Paska.”  “Their bodies all swell, sooner, or later,” said old Bukhtawar Sing, “when they commit such atrocious crimes, and Prethee Puts will begin to swell when he finds that you are inquiring into his.”  “I am afraid, my friends, that the propensity to commit them has become inveterate.  One man hears that another has obtained lands or wealth by the murder of his father or brother, and does not rest till he has attempted to get the same by the murder of his, for he sees no man punished for such crimes.”  “It is not all nor many of our clan” (Rajpoots), said the Rajah of Bulrampoor, “that can or will do this:  we never unite our sons or daughters in marriage with the family of one who is so stained with crimes.  Prethee Put and all who do as he has done, must seek an union with families of inferior caste.”  I asked him whether the people, in the Tarae forest, were still afraid to point out tigers to sportsmen.  “I was lately out with a party after a tiger,” he said, “which had killed a cowherd, but his companions refused to point out any trace of him, saying, that their relatives’ spirit must be now riding upon his head, to guide him from all danger, and we should have no chance of shooting him.  We did shoot him, however,” said the Rajah, exultingly, “and they were all, afterwards, very glad of it.  The tigers in the Tarae do not often kill men, sir, for they find plenty of deer and cattle to eat.”—­“Can you tell me, Rajah Sahib,” said I, “why it is that among the Arabs, the lion is called ‘the father of cultivation,’ ’abol hurs, or abo haris.’” “No,” replied the Rajah; “it is an odd name for a beast that feeds on nothing but the flesh of deer, cattle, and men.”  “It is, I suppose, Rajah Sahib,” I remarked, “because he feeds upon the deer, which are the greatest enemies of their young crops.”

The Rajahs of Toolseepoor and Bulrampoor, and all the merchants and respectable landholders in these parts assure me, that all the large colonies of Bhuduks, or gang robbers by hereditary profession, who had, for so many generations, up to A.D. 1840, been located in the Oude Terae forest, have entirely disappeared under the operation of the “Special Police,” of the Thuggee and Dacoitee Department, aided and supported by the Oude Government; and that not one family of them can now be found anywhere in Oude.  They have not been driven out as formerly, to return as soon as the temporary pressure ceased, but hunted down and punished, or made to blend with the rest of society in service or at honest labour.