Gohars, or auxiliary bands
from their friends.

Hurdut Sing, of Bondee, _alias_ Bumnootee, held an estate for which
he paid one hundred and eighty-two thousand (1,82,000) rupees a year
to Government; but he was driven, out of it in 1846-47, by Rughbur
Sing, the contractor, who, by rapacity and outrage, drove off the
greater part of the cultivators, and so desolated the estate that it
could not now be made to yield thirty thousand (30,000) rupees a-
year. The Raja has ever since resided with a few followers in an
island in the Ghagra. He has never openly resisted or defied the
Government, but is said to be sullen, and a bad paymaster. He still
holds the estate in its desolate condition.

The people of Nawabgunge drink the water of wells, close to the bank
of the river, and often the water of the river itself, and say that
they never suffer from it; but that a good many people in several
villages, along the same bank, have the goitre to a very distressing
degree.

_December_ 6, 1849.--Halted at Byram-ghat, in order to enable all our
people and things to come up. One of our elephants nearly lost his
life yesterday in the quick-sands of the river. Capt. Weston rode out
yesterday close to Bhitolee, the little fort of Rajah Gorbuksh Sing,
who came out in a litter and told him, that he would come to me to-
day at noon, and clear himself of the charges brought against him of
rescuing and harbouring robbers, and refusing to pay the Government
demand. He had been suffering severely from fever for fifteen days.

Karamut Allee complains that his father, Busharut Allee, had been
driven out from the purgunnahs of Nawabgunge and Sidhore, by Ghoolum
Huzrut and his associates, who had several times attacked and
plundered the town of Nawabgunge, our second stage, and a great many
other villages around, from which they had driven off all the
cultivators and stock, in order to appropriate them to themselves,
and augment their landed estates; that they had cut down all the
groves of mango-trees planted by the rightful proprietors and their
ancestors, in order to remove all local ties; and murdered or maimed
all cultivators who presumed to till any of the lands without their
permission, that Busharut Allee had held the contract for the land
revenue of the purgunnah for twenty years, and paid punctually one
hundred and thirty-five thousand (1,35,000) rupees a-year to the
treasury, till about four years ago, when Ghoolam Huzrut commenced