degree of comfort, is furnished by the experience of our village
officers to whom we make a subsistence allowance of from eight to twelve
annas per week. This with the local gifts of food which they collect in
the village enables them to live in the simplest way, and ensures them
at least one good meal of curry and rice daily, the rest being locally
supplied.

Here is the account of one of our Native Captains as to how he used to
manage with his allowance of eight annas a week. I have taken it down
myself from his own lips.

"When in charge of a village corps, I received with others my weekly
allowance. When I was alone I used to get 10 annas, and when there
were two of us together we got eight annas each. This was sufficient
to give us one good meal of kheechhree (rice and dal) every day,
with a little over for extras, such as firewood, vegetables, oil and
ghee.

"We had two regular cooked meals daily, one about noon and the other
in the evening. Besides this we also had a piece of bajari bread
left over from the previous day, when we got up in the morning.

"For the morning meal we used to beg once a week uncooked food from
the villagers. They gave us about eight or nine seers, enough to
last us for the week.

"It was a mixture of grains, consisting ordinarily of bajari,
bhavtu, kodri, jawar and mat. These we got ground up into flour. It
made a sort of bread which is known as Sangru and which we liked
very much. With it we would take some sag (vegetables) or dal. This
was our regular midday meal.

"Including the value of the food we begged, the cost of living was
just about two annas a day for each of us. We could live comfortably
upon this.

"The poorer Dhers in the villages seldom or never get kheechhree
(rice and dal). They could not afford it. Most of them live on
"ghens" (a mixture of buttermilk and coarse flour cooked into a sort
of skilly, or gruel) and bhavtu or bajari bread, or "Sangru." The
buttermilk is given to them by the village landowners, in return
for their labour. They are expected for instance to do odd jobs, cut
grass, carry wood, &c. The grain they commonly get either in harvest
time in return for labour, or buy it as they require it several
maunds at a time. Occasionally they get it in exchange for cloth.
Living in the cheapest possible way, and eating the coarsest food,