5. The road is now an excellent one.
6. Parched gram, or chick-pea, is commonly used by Indian travellers as a convenient and readily portable form of food. The 'brass jug' lent to the author could be purified by fire after his use of it.
7. Growls of this kind must not be interpreted too literally. Any village landholder, if encouraged, would grumble in the same strain.
8. This is the permanent difficulty of Indian revenue administration, which no Government measures can seriously diminish.
9. The mission to Kabul, under Captain Alexander Burnes, was not dispatched till September, 1837, and troops did not assemble before the conclusion of the treaty with the Sikhs in June, 1838. The army crossed the Indus in January, 1839. The conversation in the text is stated to have taken place 'some time after the journey herein described', and must, apparently, be dated in November, 1839. The author was in the North-Western Provinces in that year.
10. Some of Mrs. Smith's suitors entered into a combination to defraud a suitor in his court of a large sum of money, which he was to pay to Mrs. Smith as she walked in the garden. A dancing girl from the town of Jubbulpore was made to represent Mrs. Smith, and a suit of Mrs. Smith's clothes was borrowed for her from the washerman. The butler took the suitor to the garden, and introduced him to the supposed Mrs. Smith, who received him very graciously, and condescended to accept his offer of five thousand rupees in gold mohurs. The plot was afterwards discovered, and the old butler, washerman, and all, were sentenced to work in a rope on the roads. [W. H. S.]
Penal labour on the roads has been discontinued long since. Similar plots probably have often escaped detection. The whole conversation is a valuable illustration of Indian habits and modes of thought.
11. The subject of the police administration is more fully discussed post, in Chapter 69.
[CHAPTER 59]
Concentration of Capital and its Effects.