The Canoongoes and Chowdheries in Oude are commonly called Seghadars, and their duties are the same here as everywhere else in India.

December 28, 1849.—­Twelve miles to Hundore, over a country more undulating and better cultivated than any we have seen since we recrossed the Goomtee river at Sultanpoor.  It all belongs to the Rajah of Pertabghur, Shumshere Babadur, a Somebunsee, who resides at Dewlee, some six miles from Pertabghur.  His family is one of the oldest and most respectable in Oude; but his capital of Pertabghur, where he used to reside till lately, is one of the most beggarly.  He seems to have concentrated there all the beggars in the country, and there is not a house of any respectable to be seen.  The soil, all the way, has been what they call the doomut, or doomuteea, which is well adapted to all kinds of tillage, but naturally less strong than muteear or argillaceous earth, and yields scanty crops, where it is not well watered and manured.

The Rajah came to my camp in the afternoon, and attended me on his elephant in the evening when I went round the town, and to his old mud fort, now in ruins, within which is the old residence of the family.  He does not pay his revenue punctually, nor is he often prepared to attend the viceroy when required; and it was thought that he would not come to me.  Finding that the Korwar and other Rajahs and large landholders, who had been long on similar terms with the local authorities, had come in, paid their respects, and been left free, he also ventured to my camp.  For the last thirty years the mutual confidence which once subsisted between the Government authorities and the great landholders of these districts has been declining, and it ceased altogether under the last viceroy, Wajid Allee Khan, who appears to have been a man without any feeling of humanity or sense of honour.  No man ever knew what he would be called upon to pay to Government in the districts under him; and almost all the respectable landholders prepared to defend what they had by force of arms; deserted their homes, and took to the jungles with as many followers as they could collect and subsist, as soon as he entered on his charge.  The atrocities charged against him, and upon the best possible evidence, are numerous and great.

The country we have passed through to-day is well studded with fine trees, among which the mhowa abounds more than usual.  The parasite plant, called the bandha, or Indian mistletoe, ornaments the finest mhowa and mango trees.  It is said to be a disease, which appears as the tree grows old, and destroys it if not cut away.  The people, who feel much regard for their trees, cut these parasite plants away; and there is no prejudice against removing them among Hindoos, though they dare not cut away a peepul-tree which is destroying their wells, houses, temples, or tombs; nor do they, with some exceptions, dare to destroy a wolf, though he may have eaten their own