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names described in the Kheri article and equivalent to 150 per cent, per annum. Rents are rising rapidly numerous tenants examined stated that they paid more than they had been paying five years ago. The average rise was, as appears from my note-book, 14 per cent, upon men who continued to cultivate the same fields but much larger increases were taken from new men who had taken lands in place of ejected or emigrated tenants.
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Condition of the people. The majority of those who were inspected and examined gave very deplorable details. This may partly be due to the fact, that the better class of tenants do not themselves labour, and only those who are poor and reduced are met with in the fields.
A pair of bullocks to plough with is worth Rs. 25, so the security was A paucity of bullocks was very apparent one man with only fit
insufiScient.
two pairs of buUocks was working 83 village bighas, or about 18 acres he had sold the rest. The day labourers generally owed only Rs. 8 to Rs. 10, but the small farmer's men with 3 to 15 acres, owed, as a rule, Rs. 40 to Rs. 100. The universal cry was one of uniform decay, bad crops, and rack rents there were certainly no prosperous men in the field, some looked hardy and healthy enough it turned out generally that they had There was no attempt to exaggerate, nor to flatter relations in service. the sahib their statements about rent when tested by the patwaris' books turned out to be true they spoke, some plaintively, some few sullenly, most in a dull, hopeless tone. Their rice crop had been in 1873 an utter failure, and half of their cold weather crop was either destroyed or in a very perilous condition, but they worked away doggedly, pulling up the pitchers of water, struggling to save the wheat and peas on which alone they could place any reliance.*
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Land vrnproveinents. Besides, there were in some instances enormous tanks, useless owing to the dissensions or want of enterprise of their landowners. I will quote an instance.
A
mile south of Fatehpur, one Raja Gobardhan dug a great tank the huge mounds of earth which surrounded it on four sides have now become
hard as granite it is well situated, I believe, to catch the flow of water from the north, but unfortunately one corner of about twenty yards, towards which the incline lies, has been left without a mound consequently the water flows away as fast as it flows in. An expenditure of Rs. 50 upon earthwork would have filled up the breach, but there are joint owners consequently a great and picturesque deeply in debt, and quarrelling Crops all round it are dying from want of water, public work is useless. and beneath its massive rampart the peasants were laboriously raising a scanty and costly supply of water with the primitive levers and the fragile Just as the builder, a Government collector, left it unfinished pitcher. two hundred years ago, so it is now. So rarely in the course of the cenHunturies does an energetic and enterprising land-owner come forward. dreds of other tanks which the industry of ancient times provided are
A
curious piece of evidence as to the value of time in India and the small remuneration is afforded by the gleaners ; they come out to the harvest field as in England, but they gather up not entire heads, but single grains of wheat ; entire heads are rare, for the latter they compete with the ants. of labour
