d not have
demanded their banishment without a reference to the Governor-
General, because the delay of waiting for instructions involved no
danger or serious inconvenience; that is, I should not have demanded
it when the King was so strongly opposed to it. I must distinctly
deny that you demanded the King's fulfilment of his promise in
conformity to any instructions received from me, or in accordance
with my views of what was right or expedient in this matter. Your
second visit and demand were neither in conformity to the one nor in
accordance with the other. You must have put a construction upon what
I wrote which it cannot fairly bear. By "requisitions" I mean your
requirements that the two men should be banished by the King,
according to his promise. No notice has been made to me of your visit
by the Court, and I have therefore had no occasion to say anything
whatever about it in my communications to the Court, nor shall I have
any I suppose. In your letter of the 4th instant, you say, with
regard to the Taj Mahal's case, "Not knowing whether you do or do not
wish me to act in any sudden emergency during your absence, I
suppose, therefore, that had you had any such wish you would have
instructed me on the subject." In reply, I requested that you would
so act on your own discretion in any such sudden case of emergency.

Yours sincerely,
(Signed) W. H. SLEEMAN.

To Captain Bird,
&c. &c.
__________________________

Camp, Mahomdee, 2nd February, 1850.

My Dear Sir Erskine,

Had it not been too late for you to join my camp conveniently, I
should have asked you to run out and see a little of the country and
people of Oude, after you had seen so much of those of the Honourable
Company's dominions. A few years of tolerable government would make
it the finest country in India, for there is no part of India with so
many advantages from nature. I have seen no soil finer; the whole
plain of which it is composed is capable of tillage; it is everywhere
intersected by rivers, flowing from the snowy chain of the Himmalaya,
which keep the moisture near the surface at all times, without
cutting up any of the land on their borders into deep ravines; it is
studded with the finest groves and single trees, as much as the lover
of the picturesque could wish; it has the boldest and most
industrious peasantry in India, and a land