'Deputation' will be the only remedy in
our hands."

"What's Deputation?"

"You shall see. In a few days I assume
my collectorate character, and go into the
districts to gather revenue, or to receive
claims to remission. You shall accompany
me."

The weather was beautiful—the month
December—a delicious month in Upper
India, when the cool breezes from the north
mitigate the fierceness of the sun. The order
had gone forth that, on the fifteenth, the
Collector would move from Fuzzulpore into
"the districts," the nearest halting-place being
seventy-three miles from the station. The
tents and the provender having been got ready,
and the guard from the police battalion under
arms, we set forth, our palankeens
accompanying the procession; which consisted of
native clerks on ponies or in palankeens,
servants (some fifty), tent Lascars, police
peons, grooms, and an indescribable rabble
who calculated on subsisting upon the camp.
Mornington Jumps preferred riding on horseback
because it gave him an opportunity of
diverging from the main road to see how all
the improvements in his district were going
on; for, be it known that, to the ordinary
functions of a Collector of revenue and a
dispenser of law, were added the
superintendence of the construction and repair of
bridges and roads, the cutting a canal, the
looking after gaols and hospitals, the control
of a botanical garden, the establishment of
village schools, and a few other functions.
We were often stopped by some miserable
petitioner, and assailed upon the highway
by the diatribes of old women and demented
faquirs, who are the vehicles for the abuse
of disappointed suitors and victims of the
bribery system. In fact, it seemed to me
that my friend Jumps was looked upon as
the despotic Sovereign of the Empire, to
whom everybody addressed their complaints,
and on whose shoulders all the responsibilities
of government rested.

After three days' journeying, we made a
permanent halt on the margin of a mangoe
grove, near to a Hindoo temple, to which
was attached a magnificent tank of water.
In the neighbourhood were grain and cotton
fields, separated by hedge-rows of formidable
cacti from the maidaun, or open space where
the tents were pitched

The camp equipage having preceded us,
we found, on our arrival, some two thousand
persons assembled. A motley crowd it was
of landowners and villagers; of police officers
and beggars; of grain sellers and watermen;
of sweetmeat vendors and women of all ages,
with a colloquial power that rivalled the
famous Arab females of Suez, of whom it has
been said that they can, at a push, utter five
hundred words in a minute. The clamour
was terrific: attempts to stifle it absurd.
Jumps, accustomed to such scenes, walked
quietly to his own large and handsome tent,
which did duty for a Cutcherry, and there,
while he received petitions, reports, returns,
letters, and complaints, I took a survey of
the camp. Beneath umbrageous mangoe trees
sat Sircars, Moonshees, Keranees, and all the
other tribes of hired quill-drivers, preparing
durkasts or petitions from squalid creatures
who had given them their last rupees to have
set forth, in all the hyperbolic phraseology an
abject condition suggests, the nature of their
claims upon the compassionate attention of
"The Presence." Here sat a pompous Nazir
Sahib—a superior officer of the court of the
Collector and Magistrate partaking of a
feast provided by some zemindar, who was a
suitor for a remission of rent. Not far from
him a Thannadar was collecting reports from
subordinate peons, all of whom had some
difficulty in keeping off a crowd of fifty
wretches; each jabbering his own story, or
making a special appeal to the humanity
and influence of the police magnate. Under
a peepul tree the guard had piled their
muskets; a sentry being placed at the
entrance to the Cutcherry tent, and another
over the treasure chest. In many parts of
the field near the impromptu bazaar chiefly
composed of grain and metai (sweetmeat)
vendors, culinary operations were going on.
The borders of the tank were lined with
bathers and water-carriers. Numerous horses
were picketted near the cactus hedge: cows,
goats and poultry were herded close to the
cotton field. Now messengers are seen to
quit the Cutcherry, mounted on fleet horses,
to bring in some absentee zemindar, or
jemadar of police, who had pleaded illness,
that explanation may be given of ambiguous
and disputed reports; now Chuprassies with
long latties (sticks) belaboured groups to
prevent too great a pressure on the Huzoor;
now Mornington Jumps was lost in a maze
of correspondence; and, in spite of the
soothing properties of the ever-present hookah,
or " gentle Havannah," he could hardly resist
the inclination to curse the multitudinous
details which beset him. When the dawk
came in, at least twenty letters from all
quarters had to be opened and read
immediately. One contained a "wigging" from
the Commissioner because the Collector was
not sufficiently puckah (severe); another was
a dispatch from the major of a regiment, who
wanted supplies for his sepoys; a third was
from a judge, demanding explanations on
certain appeals from the magisterial decision; a
fourth an overland letter from Mr. Jumps's
mother; a fifth an angry communication from
an indigo planter, who had a hundred
unredressed wrongs on hand. Thus overwhelmed,
it was impossible that Jumps could
look into everything minutely, and here the
agency of the Omlah (or native officials) found
its profit. Such cases only were brought
forward as had been well "silvered o'er"
with the current coin of the realm. Every