" This order has arisen from my
earnest intercession in favour of the artillery draft-bullocks; but
so many are interested in the abuse, that the order will not be long
enforced. Though the grain will, as heretofore, be paid for from the
Treasury, it will, I hear, be given to the bullocks only while I am
out on this tour.
In the evening some cultivators came to complain that they had been
robbed of all their bhoosa (chaff) by a sipahee from my camp. I
found, on inquiry, that the sipahee belonged to Captain Hearsey's
five companies of Frontier Police; that these companies had sixteen
four-bullock hackeries attached to them for the carriage of their
tents and luggage; and that these hackeries had gone to the village,
and taken all that the complainants had laid up for their own cattle
for the season; that such hackeries formerly received twenty-seven
rupees eight annas a-month each, and their owners were expected to
purchase their own fodder; but that this allowance had for some years
been cut down to fourteen rupees a-month, and they were told _to help
themselves to fodder wherever they could find it_; that all the
hackeries hired by the King and his local officers, for the use of
troops, establishments, &c. had been reduced at the same rate, from
twenty-seven eight annas a-month to fourteen, and their owners
received the same order. All villages near the roads along which the
troops and establishments move are plundered of their bhoosa, and all
those within ten miles of the place, where they may be detained for a
week or fortnight, are plundered in the same way.
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