Annals of rural Bengal / by W. W. Hunter.

Dedication

Broomhill House,

4 th March 1868.

My Dear Sir Cecil,

Chapter II. The State Of The Country When It Passed Under British Rule

The Old System of Government under Native Princes, . .13

It breaks down, and the Country passes under British Rule, . 1 5

Permanent Effects of the Great Famine of 1769-70, . . 19

Distress anticipated, but the Land-Tax raised, . . . 23

The Famine declares itself, . . . . .24

One-third of the People perish, . . . . .24

The Living feed upon the Dead, . . . . .26

The Desolation of Gour, . . . . . .29

The December Harvest (1770) restores Plenty, . . 31

But to a silent and deserted Province, . . . 3 1

Who was to blame ? . . . . . -34

Character and Scale of Relief Measures, . . *36

But such Measures always inadequate, . . . .40

The Famine intensified by Interference with Private Enterprise, 43 Orissa isolated in 1866 ; Bengal isolated in 1770, . . 45

The normal Effect of Famine in Bengal, . . *49

The Specifics for Famine, . . . . "55

The Ruin of the ancient Aristocracy, 1770, . . *56

X

CONTENTS.

The Relations of Labour and Capital transposed, 1776, . 59

From 1770 to 1789 one-third of Bengal lies waste, . • 61

Severe Revenue Measures, . . . . >63

The Western Districts made over to Tigers and wild Elephants, 64 Rural Industry at a stand, . . . . .69

Bengal in the Hands of Banditti, . . . . >7°

The ‘ Debateable Land,’ . . . . . >75

Beerbhoom in 1789 ; the Warding of the Passes, . . 76

Bishenpore in 1789 ; the Hill-men burst through the Passes, . 78

The ancient Capital sacked by Banditti, . . . .81

Estimate of Losses caused by their Devastations, . . 83

Results of our first efforts to establish Order, . . .84

The Western Frontier obtains Rest: its condition then and now, 85

Chapter III. The Ethnical Elements Of The Lowland Population Of Bengal

The Aryans and Aborigines, . . . . .88

The Struggle for Life in Ancient India, . . . .89

The Aryan Race, . . . . . . .90

Its Line of March through Bengal, . . . .92

Aryan Civilisation, as portrayed by Manu, a Local System, . 97

A rigid fourfold System of Caste unknown in Lower Bengal, . 100

The Five component Parts of the Population of Bengal, . 107

The primitive Children of the Soil, . . . .109

The Aryans and Aborigines contrasted ; first, as to Speech, . 112

Second, as to Colour, . . . . . .114

Third, as to Food, . . . . . . . 115

Fourth, as to Religious Conceptions, . . . . 115

Fifth, as to their Belief in Immortality, . . . . 117

Aryan Funeral Rites, . . . . . .119

The Future Life described, . . . . .121

Whence these Conceptions ? . . . . .122

Aboriginal Funeral Rites, . . . . .124

Influence of the Aborigines on the Aryans ; first, as to Speech, 126 Second, as to Religion ; Demon- worship and Human Sacrifices, 127 Siva and the Hindu Village Gods borrowed from Aborigines, 129, 194 Third, Influence of the Aborigines on the Political Destiny and

Character of the I ndo-Aryans, .... 136

The Future oi the Indian Races, .... 140

CONTENTS.

xi

Chapter IV. The Aboriginal Hill-men Of Beerbhoom

PAGE

The Black Races of Bengal, a new Field of Study, . . 141

The Santal Tribes of Western Beerbhoom, . . . 145

Santal Traditions : the Creation, the Dispersion, etc., . . 147

Analogies to the Mosaic and Aryan Accounts, . . .150

The Legend of the Creation rather a Legend of the Flood, . 1 5 1

Santal Pre-historic Reminiscences, . . . .152

Santal Speech, . . . . . . .156

The present Classification of Languages unscientific, . .160

The New Lights, ....... 161

Santali examined by the New Lights: its Inflections, . . 162

Its Place among Languages, . . . . .165

The Confluence of Languages in Bengal, . . . 167

A Uniform Method for studying non-Aryan Speech, . . 169

Roots common to Aryan and non-Aryan Speech, . . 17 1

Santali Words in Prakrit, . . . . .176

Prakrit Words in Santali, ..... 178

General Deductions concerning Santal Speech, . . . 179

Santal Religion, . . . . . . .181

Family and Village Gods, . . . . .182

The Santal Trinity, . . . . . .187

Identity of the Santal Race God with the Hindu Siva, . .188

The Hindu Family Gods, Village Gods, and Siva, borrowed

from the Aborigines, . . . . . . 194

Connection between the Aboriginal Rites and Buddhism, . 195

Connection between the Aboriginal Rites and Modern Hinduism, ........ 199

Caste unknown among the Santals ; the Seven Clans, . . 200

The Six Great Ceremonies in a Santal’s Life, . . . 203

Admission into the Family and into the Clan, . . . 203

Admission into the Race, ...... 204

Union of his own Clan with another ; Weddings, . . 205

The Santal faithful to one Wife ; Divorce, . . . 208

Dismission from the Race ; Santal Funeral Rites, . . 208

The Santal’s Conceptions of a Future State, . . .210

Reunion of the Dead with the Fathers, .... 210

The Santal as a Cultivator and as a Hunter, . . .211

Santal Sport, . . . . . . >213

Santal Agriculture, . . . • . .214

CONTENTS.

xii

Santal Hospitality and Courtesy, .

Santal Village Government,

Frankness and Easy Decorum of the Santal Women Dance, .....

The Santal’s Aversion to Strangers,

The Santals as Depredators,

As Colonists and Day-labourers, .

They migrate Northwards to Rajmahal, .

They furnish the Sinews of English Enterprise in Bengal, Pressure of the Population in the East and the West,

The Santal Colonists oppressed by Hindu Traders,

Our Courts fail to give Redress, .

The Santals, in Despair, fly to the Jungle,

Hindu Usury develops Slavery, .

English Capital renders Freedom profitable,

The Santals grow restless ; Warnings and Portents,

They collect in Armed Masses, .

They break out in Rebellion,

Martial Law delayed, ....

Personal Narrative of the Rebellion,

The Rebellion at its Height,

Martial Law declared ; the Rebellion put down,

The Wrongs of the Santals redressed,

The Railway abolishes Slavery,

The Hill-men migrate to the Tea Districts,

The Perils of Ignorance, ....

Statistics an indispensable Complement of Civilisation,

PAGE

• 232

• 234

. 236 . 238 . 240

• 243

• 247 . 250 . 251 . 252

• 255 . 256 . 259 . 260

Chapter V. The Company’s First Attempts At Rural Administration

1765-1790.

Administration by ‘ Black Collectors,’ 1765, . . . 261

Hastings’ Plan ; Period of Experiment and Error, 1772-1786, . 266

Lord Cornwallis’ Provisional System, 1786-1790, . . 267

Cost and Character of Rural Administration, 1788 and 1864, . 269

t The Land-Tax and Excise before 1793, . . . .271

Ancient Intemperance and present Sobriety of the Bengali, . 275

The Temple-Tax, its History, and how levied, . . . 279

The District Government Bank, ..... 287

The Government Bank stops Payment, 1790, . . . 289

The Guarding of Treasure, . . . . .291

CONTENTS.

xiii

PAGE

State of the Rural Currency, ..... 293

Variety of Coins ; Inadequacy of the Coinage, . . . 295

The Mussulman System of a Single Circulating Medium, . 298

The ideal Standard of Value, ..... 300

The Company’s first Currency Reform, 1766, . . . 301

The Gold Coinage of 1766, its Failure, .... 302

Permanent Drain on the Currency of Bengal, . . . 305

Gold Coinage of 1769, its Failure, .... 308

History of the Currency, 1769-1789, .... 309

Currency Reforms of 1790, . . . . . 313

Currency Crisis of 1790-91, . . . . . 317

Final Triumph of the Reforms, 1794, .... 321

The Frontier and Fiscal Police before 1792, . . . 323

The Rural Criminal Administration, .... 328

A Regular Police formed, 1792, ..... 331

The Village Watch, its inherent Defects, .... 333

Mussulman Jail Discipline, ..... 337

The Rural Civil Courts, 1790 and 1864, .... 339

Natural Sources of Excessive Litigation in Bengal, . . 341

The Character of Civil Justice before 1792, . . . 344

The recognised Functions of the Company, 1765-1792, . 347

Chapter VI. The Company As A Rural Manufacturer

The District ‘ Investment,’ ..... 350

Little Centres of Rural Industry form, . . . . 351

The Commercial Resident as a Labour-employer, . . 353

As Magistrate and Judge, ...... 355

As a Private Speculator, ...... 356

The ‘Adventurer,’ Mr. Fru shard, . . . . *358

His Misfortunes and Contests with the Collector, . . 360

His ultimate Triumph, ...... 362

‘ Adventurers’ and ‘ Interlopers,’ their Legal Status, . . 364

English Enterprise in Rural Bengal, 1789 and 1866, . . 365

The Company as a Rural Administrator and Manufacturer, 1765-1790, 368

XIV

CONTENTS.

Conclusion

PAGE

The gradual Growth of the Company’s Rural Government, . 369

The true Function of the Indian Historian, . . . 37 1

The Rights of the People still unascertained, . . . 372

Analogy of the Muhammadan Tenures in Turkey to those in Bengal, ........ 374

Appendix

A. Bengal in 1772, portrayed by Warren Hastings, . . 379

B. The Great Famine of 1770, described by Eye-witnesses, . 399

C. The Cook’s Chronicle of Beerbhoom, .... 422

D. The Pandit’s Chronicle of Beerbhoom, . . . 426

E. The Pandit’s Chronicle of Bishenpore, . . . 439

F. The Family Book of the Princes of Beerbhoom, . . 447

G. Santal Traditions, ...... 450

H. A Skeleton Santali Grammar, .... 454

I. Santal Festivals, ...... 463

K. A few Official Papers on the Santal Insurrection, . . 465

L. Revenue and Cost of District Administration before the

Permanent Settlement, ..... 470

M. Present Revenue and Cost of District Administration, . 471

O. The Coins in Use at Six Indian Ports, 1763, . . 473

To facilitate reference certain letters are appended to quotations

from manuscripts indicating where the originals may be found. The

following are

the contractions used : —

I. O. R.

. MS. Records (English), in the India Office, Whitehall.

. MS. Records (English and Persian), in the Calcutta Offices.

B. R. R.

. MS. Revenue Records (English and Persian), in the Beerbhoom Offices.

B. J. R.

. MS. Judicial Records (English, Persian, and Bengali), in the Beerbhoom Courts.

B. D. A.

. MS. Domestic Archives (Persian and Bengali) of the Rajahs, and other families, in Beerbhoom.

Bn. R.

. MS. Records (English and Persian), in the Burdwan Courts and Offices.

Bh. R.

. MS. Records (English and Bengali), in the Bancorah Courts and Offices.

Be. D.A.

. MS. Domestic Archives (Persian and Bengali) of the Rajah of Bishenpore.

. MSS. and rare Tracts in the India Office Library.

. Ootaparah Collection, being a series of rare Tracts and Newspapers of the last century, belonging to Babu Jaikissen Mukarji of Ootaparah, in Bengal.

THE

ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL.

Chapter I. Introduction

/AN the frontier of Lower Bengal, fifty miles west from the field of Plassy, are to be traced the landmarks of two ancient kingdoms. They lie along the intermediate country between the lofty plateau of Central India and the valley of the Ganges. The primeval force which had upheaved the interior table-land here spent itself on fragmentary ridges and long wavy downs. On the west rise the mountains, covered to the summit with masses of vegetation. Gorgeous creepers first wreathe with flowers, then strangle their parent stems, and finally bind together the living and the dead in one impenetrable thicket. Here and there an isolated hill with a flat top stands out like a fortress on the plains. From ravines, arched over with foliage, turbid cataracts leap down upon the valley, there to unite into rivers which, at one

season of the year, pour along in volumes of water, VOL. I. A

THE AJVNALS OF RURAL BENGAL.

half a mile broad and twenty feet deep, and at another season, dwindle to silver threads amid wide expanses of sand. Over the uplands the jungle still holds its primitive reign, affording covert to wild beasts and cool glades for herds of cattle. In general the plains undulate gently eastward, dotted with fruit-bearing groves, enamelled with bright green rice fields, and studded with prosperous villages. The soil, although less fertile than the swamps of Eastern Bengal, returns in low-lying grounds two crops each year ; and the bracing atmosphere makes ample amends to the cultivator for the additional labour demanded by his fields. The forest yields a spontaneous wealth of timber, gums, and brilliant lac-dye ; the valleys produce the finest indigo; cotton, jute, sugar-cane, oil-seeds, and cereals grow abundantly ; from the mulberry shrubs are still derived the silks that adorned the beauties of the imperial seraglio ; silver ore has been dug out of the mountains ; copper is found on their slopes ; small particles of gold have been washed from the river beds ; and the country has long been famous for its iron and coal.

This well- watered land, rich in noble scenery,1

1 ‘ A land of hill and dale, wood and water, abounding in scenery interesting to the geologist and lover of the picturesque. The climate also changes : the nights are cool and clear ; the damp and fog of Calcutta are left behind.’ — The Grand Trunk Road, its Localities, p. 1 8. Pamphlet, 8vo. Calcutta. The same traveller somewhat too enthusiastically calls the Beerbhoom highlands, ‘ the Switzerland of Bengal.’ This and several other of the pamphlets by the Rev. James Long, subsequently quoted, appeared originally as articles in the Calcutta Review.

THE ETHNICAL FRONTIER.

and enjoying during five months of the year an exquisite climate, formed the theatre of one of the primitive struggles of Indian history. It stood as the outpost of the Sanskrit race on the west of Lower Bengal, and had to bear the sharp collisions of Aryan civilisation with the ruder types prevailing among the aborigines. On its inhabitants devolved, during three thousand years, the duty of holding the passes between the highlands and the valley of the Ganges. To this day they are a manlier race than their kinsmen of the plains, and from the beginning of history one of the two kingdoms has borne the name of Mala-bhumi, the Country of the Wrestlers, — the other the appellation of Vir-bhumi, the Hero Land.

It is a matter of regret that an ethnical frontier which must have seen and suffered so much that would be interesting to mankind to know, should be without any record of the past. Every county, almost every parish, in England, has its annals ; but in India, vast provinces, greater in extent than the British Islands, have no individual history whatever. Districts that have furnished the sites of famous battles, or lain upon the routes of imperial progresses, appear, indeed, for a moment in the general records of the country ; but before the eye has become familiar with their uncouth names, the narrative passes on, and they are forgotten. Nor are the inhabitants themselves very much better acquainted with the history of the country in which they live. Each field, indeed, has its annals. The crops which

THE ANNALS OF RUE AL BENGAL.

it has borne during the past century, the rent which it has paid, the occasions on which it has changed hands, the old standing disputes about its watercourses and landmarks, all these are treasured up with sufficient precision. But the bygone joys and sorrows of the district in general, its memorable vicissitudes, its remarkable men, the decline of old forms of industry and the rise of new,— in a word, all the weightier matters of rural history, are forgotten. Life wants the outdoor element which it possesses in so remarkable a degree in England. Men of the upper classes come less frequently into contact with each other ; caste and religious differences dwarf the growth of good fellowship and limit the interchange of hospitalities ; and anything like society in the European sense of the word is prevented by the seclusion of the female sex. The strong county feeling which knits together the magnates of an English shire has not had a chance of being developed among the landed gentry of India. Each house scrupulously preserves its own archives, but carefully conceals them from its neighbours. Indeed, it never strikes the listless, rich native, that what to him are dull contemporaneous events will in time possess the interest of history ; nor are there any antiquarians to gather up such meagre records as vanity or selfishness may have framed. English history owes much of its value, and still more of its pathos, to the stores of private documents which the strong individuality of bygone Englishmen has left behind ; but in India,

THE MATERIALS OF RURAL HISTORY.

one rural generation dreams out its existence after another, and all are forgotten.

Not many family archives of importance have passed into my hands. The Rajahs placed at my disposal a portion of the manuscripts in their dilapidated palaces ; the representatives of other distinguished houses followed their example ; Pandits were employed to go about the country in order to gather materials for a history of each district from their own point of view ; and several native gentle - men co-operated with me in collecting the folk-lore. The result of these inquiries, however, was too meagre and too unreliable for publication. But four years ago, in taking over charge of the District Treasury, I was struck with the appearance of an ancient press, which, from the state of its padlocks, seemed not to have been opened for many years, and with whose contents none of the native officials was acquainted. On being broken open it was found to contain the early records of the district from within a year of the time that it passed directly under British rule. The volumes presented every appearance of age and decay ; their yellow-stained margins were deeply eaten into by insects, their outer pages crumbled to pieces under the most tender handling, and of some the sole palpable remains were chips of paper mingled with the granular dust that white ants leave behind.

Careful research has convinced me that these neglected heaps contain much that is worthy of being preserved. For what trustworthy account

THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL .

have we of the state of rural India at the commencement and during the early stages of our rule ? Eloquent and elaborate narratives have indeed been written of the British ascendency in the East ; but such narratives are records of the English Government, or biographies of the English Governors of India, not histories of the Indian people. The silent millions who bear our yoke have found no annalist.2

The only extensive investigations into the rural statistics of India are those conducted by the Survey Department, and no witness could give more telling evidence in proof of our ignorance than this, the single one we have to cite in our favour. The important parts of Bengal Proper, from a historical point of view, are unquestionably those that lie around the three cities which three successive races fixed upon as the headquarters of their rule. The Origin and History of the district that has Calcutta for its capital are disposed of in rather more than one page, a considerable portion of which is taken up by a feeble account of the Black Hole, and the often narrated hostilities that ensued. The Origin and History of Moorshedabad, the ancient focus of Moslem magnificence, are dismissed with half a page ; and Maldah, the Hindu metropolis of Bengal, with its

2 The author of ‘The Grand Trunk Road, its Localities’ (p. 1 6), states that Vir-bhumi ‘ is quite unexplored.’ This was written scarcely ten years ago of a district lying within one hundred miles of Calcutta, and only a five hours’ railway journey from it. The extent of our information as to remoter provinces may be inferred.

THE ABSENCE OF RURAL HISTORY.

long line of kings, its gigantic walls and arches, its once stately palaces now the kennels of jackals, and the vast untenanted city which has been left standing as a spectacle of desolation and warning to those who now are to India what its builders once were, is treated as if it had been a sandbank which the river silted up last October, and will swallow down again next June. In a thin folio, not a single page has been devoted to its history.

This, too, with the richest and most authentic materials for rural history at our command. Valuable private stores of documents are indeed wanting; but for their absence the abundance of official records makes ample amends. In the chief Government office of every district in Bengal are presses filled with papers similar to those I have described. They consist of reports, letters, minutes, judicial proceedings, and relate, in the words of eye-witnesses and with official accuracy, the daily history of the country from the time the English took the administration into their own hands. Many of them are written in the curt forcible language which men use in moments of excitement or peril ; and in spite of the blunders of copyists and the ravages of decay, they have about them that air of real life which proceeds not from literary ability, but from the fact that their authors’ minds were full of the subjects on which they wrote. We learn from these worm-eaten manuscripts that what we have been accustomed to regard as Indian history is a chronicle of events which hardly affected, and which were for

THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL.

the most part unknown to, the contemporary mass of the Indian people. On their discoloured pages the conspicuous vicissitudes and revolutions of the past century have left no trace. Dynasties struggled and fell, but the bulk of the people evinced neither sympathy nor surprise, nor did the pulse of village life in Bengal move a single beat faster for all the calamities and panic of the outside world. But these volumes, so silent on subjects about which we are already well informed, speak at length and with the utmost precision on matters regarding which the western world is profoundly ignorant. They depict in vivid colours the state of rural India when the sceptre departed from the Mussulman race. They disclose the complicated evils that rendered our accession, for some time, an aggravation rather than a mitigation of the sufferings of the people. They unfold one after another the misapprehensions and disastrous vacillations amid which our first solid progress was made. They impartially retain the evidence of low motives and official incompetence side by side with the impress of rare devotion and administrative skill. But taken as a whole, they reveal the secret of England’s greatness in the East. They exhibit a small band of our countrymen going forth to govern an unexplored and a halfsubdued territory. Before the grave heroism and masterful characters of these men the native mind succumbed. Our troops originated for us a rude Mahratta-like supremacy ; but the rural records attest that the permanent sources of the English

TIIE OFFICIAL RECORDS.

ascendency in Bengal have been, not their brilliant military successes, but deliberate civil courage and indomitable will.

Besides the value of these memorials as a groundwork for an accurate and a yet unwritten history, they possess a special interest to those who are charged with the government of India at the present day. When the East India Company accepted the internal administration of Bengal, it engaged to rule in accordance with native usages ;

o o o

and the first step towards the fulfilment of its promise was to ascertain what these usages really were. To this end instructions repeatedly issued during a period of thirty years directing all local officers to institute inquiries, and even after the formal command was removed the habit of collecting and reporting information continued till 1820.

The period at which the rural records open in the western districts is one of peculiar interest. It stands on the border ground between the ancient and the modern system of Indian government. The evidence on which to form a permanent arrangement of the land revenue was in process of being collected, and not a single subject of fiscal legislation nor a detail in the agricultural economy of each district escaped inquiry. The tenure of the landholders and their relations to the middlemen ; the tenure of the cultivators, their earnings and their style of living, their clothing and the occupation of their families at odd hours ; the price of all sorts of country produce ; the rent

IO

THE ANNALS OF RUE AL BENGAL.

of various qualities of land ; the mineral products of the district ; the condition of the artisans and manufacturers, their profits and their public burdens ; the native currency and system of exchange ; the native system of police ; the state of the district jail ; lastly, cesses, tolls, dues, and every other method of recognised or unrecognised taxation, —

o O 7

formed in turn the subject of report. In a word, the whole fabric of the rural life of Bengal, with its joys, sorrows, and manifold oppressions, is dissected and laid bare.

The sweeping revenue reforms inaugurated at the close of the first quarter of the present century, and the demands for a more exact administration that every year has brought forth since, have left neither leisure nor inclination for such studies. The labours of a previous school of officers soon became a subject of indifference to their successors ; the quick decay of a tropical climate began its work; and of the researches that had occupied the ablest administrators during the first fifty years of our rule, — researches that they had designed as the basis of a consistent system of Indian rural law,— the greater part has, during the second fifty years, been made over as a prey to mildew and white ants.

What proportion has perished can never be known. What part survives can only be permanently preserved by the intervention of the State. Among a highly cultured people the writing of national history may well be left to private efforts ; but in modern India no leisurely and lettered class

THE SOURCES OF THIS WORK. n

has yet been developed to conduct such researches.'1 In truth, government among imperfectly civilised societies has to discharge many functions which, in a more advanced stage, may, with great wisdom, be made over to individual enterprise. No one can be more sensitively conscious than the writer of the imperfections of a work written in the jungle, eight thousand miles distant from European libraries, amid the changes and daily exactions of an Indian career. But this isolation, while productive of sufficiently obvious defects, has enabled him to essay several things not attempted before. The manuscript Indian archives in London, in Calcutta, and in the provincial offices of Bengal have for the first time been compared, and their information brought to a common focus. Learned natives have been employed to compile district histories, and the Ancient Houses of Bengal have been induced, for the first time in the English annals of the Province, to open up their family recordrooms. The whole body of missionaries — Episcopal, Baptist, and American Dissenters — who labour among the lapsed races on the ethnical frontier, have heartily joined in the work, each favouring me with the results of his own researches into the

8 Dr. Buchanan, who was engaged in a statistical and historical survey of the districts north of Beerbhoom (1807-1814), could not find a single antiquarian or a single historical document throughout the great province of Bahar. — The History, Antiquities, etc., of Eastern India, compiled from the Buchanan MSS., in the East India House, by R. Montgomery Martin, 3 vols. 8vo, 1838, vol. I., p. 21. This work would form an excellent basis for a history of rural Bengal, were it not confined to a few districts only.

THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL.

languages and habits of the hill-men. If it were not invidious to particularize any single class of my coadjutors, it would be to these learned and reverend gentlemen that I should wish to return especial thanks.

Whatever may be the shortcomings of this preliminary volume, the author believes that it will lead to the discovery, and he hopes to the rescue, of a vast store of materials from which an invaluable work might be educed ; materials which will enable the Indian Government to discharge two

o

hitherto neglected duties ; the duty which it owes to our own nation, of preserving the only circumstantial memorials of British rule in Bengal, and the duty it owes to other nations, of interpreting the rural millions of India to the western world.4

4 It is due to the Bengal Government to state, that I was relieved during a short time from other duties, in order to be enabled to prosecute the researches of which this volume is the first-fruits. But hardly had the arrangement been made when the famine of 1865-66 came, and the services of every officer were required for practical work.

THE HEREDITARY CHIEFS.