CHAPTER XXVI. 



Having described the city and inhabitants of Dhuboy, the ad- 

 ministration of juslice, and collection of the revenues in that dis- 

 trict, I will now more briefly mention the subordinate purgunnas 

 intrusted to my management. 



The nearest of those districts was called Bhaderpoor; it con- 

 tained a small town of the same name, and sixteen inhabited vil- 

 lages. As the capitals were within a few miles of each other, I 

 frequently visited it, and sometimes resided there at the commence- 

 ment of the harvest immediately after the rains; when the roads, 

 not only in the Bhaderpoor purgunna, but many other places, were 

 so destroyed by the preceding heavy rains and floods, that it was 

 impossible to travel without sending precursors to see that the 

 hills of sand and mud were levelled, and the chasms and ravines 

 filled up, before a wheeled carriage could pass. This, by the cus- 

 tom of the country, is performed gratuitously for governors and 

 persons in office; and at this season travellers of every descrip- 

 tion, whether in a palanquin or on horseback, must have the high- 

 ways mended before they undertake a journey. During the rainy 

 season they are generally impassable, and frequently invisible, 

 from inundation. On the halcarra, or harbinger, arriving; at a 



VOL. II. 3 m 



