103 



complete the Raipoor estate; but though 1 have 

 offered as hig'h as fifteen and twenty rupees an acre,* 

 prices before unheard of in the country, all my efforts 

 have proved unavailing. They steadily refuse to 

 sell a single rood. They say, e Why have you come 

 here ? We don't want you. We know you only 

 wish to deprive us of our land, and then make coolies 

 of us to work on your estates, but we are determined 

 you shall not have the land/ There is, therefore, a 

 combination amongst them, not to sell any land to 

 Europeans, and no man dares to break it." 



These ideas will doubtless give way before the 

 advantages the solid benefits which invariably flow 

 from the introduction of capital :| but, that they 

 exist and that such claims are now put forth in 

 many parts of India, is indisputable. Indeed there 

 can be no better measure of the importance attached 

 to hucks in land by the natives, than the distaste 

 with which they view the encroachment of Euro- 

 peans. 



It is true that the waste lands for sale are sup- 

 posed to be unincumbered with hucks, and at the 

 absolute disposal of Government ; but though there 



* The Zemindars can sell, it must be recollected, nothing 

 but the proprietary right, subject, after the expiry of the 

 settlement, to any assessment the Government chooses to 

 impose. 



f In parts of Assam the price of grain has risen four / i 

 hundred per cent in four years, since the introduction of tea \ I 

 planting, thus placing the Government in a position to double 

 the land tax, and still leave the cultivator more than twice as 

 rich as he was before. 



