al Mr. Wilmot and Mr. Wright, who had come on business, and
Mr. Gubbins, breakfasted and dined with us. They complained sadly of
the solitude to which they were condemned, but admitted that they
should not be able to get through half so much business were they
placed at a large station, and exposed to all the temptations and
distractions of a gay and extensive circle, nor feel the same
interest in their duties, or sympathy with the people, as they do
when thrown among them in this manner. To give young men good
feelings towards the natives, the only good way is to throw them
among them at those out-stations in the early part of their career,
when all their feelings are fresh about them. This holds good as well
with the military as the civil officer, but more especially with the
latter. A young officer at an outpost with his corps, or part of it,
for the first season or two, commonly lays in a store of good feeling
towards his men that lasts him for life; and a young gentleman of the
Civil Service lays in, in the same manner, a good store of sympathy
and fellow feeling with the natives in general.[1]

Mr. Gubbins is the Magistrate and Collector of one of the three
districts into which the Delhi territories are divided, and he has
charge of Firozpur, the resumed estate of the late Nawab Shams-ud-
din, which yields a net revenue of about two hundred thousand rupees
a year.[2] I have already stated that this Nawab took good care that
his Mewati plunderers should not rob within his own estate; but he
not only gave them free permission to rob over the surrounding
districts of our territory, but encouraged them to do so, that he
might share in their booty.[3] He was a handsome young man, and an
extremely agreeable companion; but a most unprincipled and licentious
character. No man who was reputed to have a handsome wife or daughter
was for a moment safe within his territories. The following account
of Mr. William Fraser's assassination by this Nawab may, I think, be
relied upon.[4]

The Firozpur Jagir was one of the principalities created under the
principle of Lord Cornwallis's second administration, which was to
make the security of the British dominions dependent upon the
divisions among the independent native chiefs upon their frontiers.
The person receiving the grant or confirmation of such principality
from the British Government 'pledged himself to relinquish all claims
to aid, and to maintain the peace in his own pos