managed by their officials that the Province had collapsed into a chronic state of anarchy. These officials had become the farmers of the revenue, paying large sums to the Darbár as fees for their position and as the normal revenue of their districts, but extorting all they could by force or fraud from the Rájput landholders and occupants of the soil. These officials — amils they were called — varied in character and ability, but the oppression was on the whole execrable, and in some cases terrible, devastating hundreds of miles of territory and destroying or driving away the people. This was absolutely unquestionable, as was proved by the inquiry and personal knowledge and evidence of men of the highest character and of unimpeachable integrity. But the correctness of their evidence has been challenged, on the ground of the impossibility of the existence of such desolation as was described being compatible with the estimated strength of the population at various subsequent dates. But, in fact, those estimates were so fluctuating as to prove their own worthlessness. One particular feature of the desolate state of the country was that the weaker chiefs and clans had been reduced or driven off into British territory, and their lands had either, as in the Nánpárá and Tulsipur districts, been devastated and wantonly laid waste, or, as in other cases, had been seized by the amils as their own property. Another feature was, that with the more powerful clans there was constant intermittent warfare, and their chiefs had very large forts or fortified villages, in which the
