rictly
reciprocal, unless, in any special case, there be very strong reason
for a departure from the rule.* But some magistrates of districts
disregard altogether applications made to them by the sovereign of
Oude, through the British Resident, for the arrest of subjects of
Oude who have committed the most atrocious robberies and murders in
the Oude territory in open day, and in the sight of hundreds; and
allow refugees from Oude to collect and keep up gangs of robbers
within their own districts, and rob and murder within the Oude
territory. Happily such Magistrates are rare. Government, in a letter
dated the 25th February, 1848, state--"that it is the duty of the
magistrates of our districts bordering on Oude to adopt vigorous
measures for preventing the assembling or entertaining of followers
by any party, for the purpose of committing acts of violence on the
Oude side of the frontier."

[* See their letter to the Government of India, 27th May 1835.]

_December_ 8, 1849.--Pukharpoor, a distance of fourteen miles, over a
fine plain of good soil, scantily tilled. For some miles the road lay
through Rajah Hurdut Sing's estate of Bumnootee, which was, with the
rest of the district of Bahraetch and Gonda, plundered by Rughbur
Sing, during the two years that he held the contract. We passed
through no village or hamlet, but saw some at a distance from the
road, with their dwellings of naked mud walls, the abodes of fear and
wretchedness; but the plain is well studded with groves and fine
single trees, and the crops are good where there are any on the
ground. Under good management, the country would be exceedingly
beautiful, and was so until within the last four years.

In the evening I had a long talk with the people of the village, who
had assembled round our tents. Many of them had the goitre; but they
told me, that in this and all the villages within twenty miles the
disease had, of late years, diminished; that hardly one-quarter of
the number that used to suffer from it had now the disease; that the
quality of the water must have improved, though they knew not why, as
they still drank from the same wells. These wells must penetrate into
some bed of mineral or other substance, which produces this disease
of the glands, and may in time exhaust it. But it is probable, that
the number who suffer from this disease has diminished merely with
the rest of the population, and that the proportion which the
goitered bear to the