The country is everywhere studded with the same fine groves and single trees, and requires only tillage to become a garden.

From the belt of jungle to our camp at Gokurnath, seven miles, the road runs over an open grass plain, with here and there a field of corn.

The sites of villages are numerous, but few of them are occupied at present.

All are said to have been in a flourishing state, and filled by a happy peasantry, when Hakeem Mehndee lost the government.

Since that time these villages and hamlets have diminished by degrees, in proportion as the rapacity of the contractors and the turbulence of the Rajpoot landholders have increased.
The first village we passed through, after emerging from the belt of jungle, was Pureylee, which is held and occupied by a large family of cultivating proprietors of the Koormee caste.