The man who, by violence, fraud, and
collusion, absorbs the estates of his weaker neighbours, and creates
a large one for himself, in any part of Oude, however richly
cultivated and thickly peopled, provides himself with one or two mud
forts, and turns the country around them into a jungle, which he
considers to be indispensable as well to his comfort as to his
security.
[* The surface of the Oude territory, including the Terae forest, is
supposed to contain twenty-three thousand seven hundred and thirty-
nine square miles. The Terae forest includes, perhaps, from four to
five thousand miles; but within that space there is a great deal of
land well tilled and peopled.]
The atrocities described in the above narrative were committed by
Bhooree Khan, in the process of converting his estate of Dewa into a
jungle, and building strongholds for his gang as it increased and
became more and more formidable. Having converted Deogon into a
jungle, and built his strongholds, he would, by the usual process of
violence, fraud, and collusion with local authorities, have absorbed
the small surrounding estates of his weaker neighbours, and formed a
very large one for himself. The same process, no doubt, went on in
England successively under the Saxons, Danes, and Normans; and in
every country in Europe, under successive invaders and conquerors, or
as long as the baronial proprietors of the soil were too strong to be
coerced by their Sovereign as they are in Oude.
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