The money which we send to
the treasuries is commonly intrusted to pausees, and their fidelity
and courage may be relied upon. The gang robbers do little injury to
our fields while the crops are green, for they take animals of hardly
any kind with them in their enterprises; and having to move to and
from their points of attack as quickly as possible, they could carry
little of our crops with them; they are, too, afraid of the arrows of
the pausee bowmen at night, if they venture to trespass upon our
fields." "And are these pausee bowmen paid at the rate you mention
all over the country?" "No, sir; they are in some parts paid in what
is called the beega arhaeya, or two seers and half of grain from
every beega. From a pucka beega they get pucka two and half seers;
and from a kutcha beega, a kutcha two and half seers."* "Your crops,
my friends, are finer than I have ever before seen them in Oude."
"Yes, sir, they are very fine; but how we shall gather them God only
knows, with such gangs of desperate robbers all around us. The alarm
is sounded every night, and we have no rest. The Government
authorities are too weak to protect us, or too indifferent to our
sufferings; and we cannot afford to provide the means to protect
ourselves."
[* The kutcha measure bears the same relation to the pucka in weight
as in land measurement.]
As we went on, I asked the Amil what had become of Ahburun Sing, of
Kyampore, the landholder who murdered his father to get possession of
his estate, as mentioned in the early part of this Diary.
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