There were various clans, or colonies, of Dacoits. The Budhuks lived in the Oude Teraie, or belt of forest land lying along the foot of the Nepaul hills, whence they made frequent incursions into the British territory, especially to the eastward in the direction of Goruckpore. They were men of low caste, and would eat anything but bullocks, cows, buffaloes, snakes, foxes, and lizards. Agricultural employments they abhorred as too toilsome. According to a familiar proverb, "once a Budhuk, always a Budhuk, and all Budhuks are Dacoits." Their leaders were almost invariably men of good descent: some of them affected to trace back their ancestors for twenty generations, and adduced their long impunity as a proof that they were predestined to be what they were, and that, consequently they could never be anything else. "The tiger's offspring," they would say, "are tigers--the young Budhuks become Dacoits." In their palmy days they were able to maintain ten or a dozen wives, but when misfortunes came upon them they were compelled to reduce the pleasing burden to four or five. And they were not altogether a burden, for each wife received in the division of spoil a sum equal to two-thirds of her husband's share. A penitent Budhuk once made the logical, but ungallant remark, that it was the women who ought to be transported, for then no more Budhuks would be born into the world. Nevertheless, in times of trouble the old women were not without their use. They would then assume the semblance of extreme poverty, and, mounted on wretched ponies, would travel many a long weary mile to the place where their relatives were confined, and by judicious presents to the native officers in authority, generally succeeded in mitigating the lot, if they failed to accomplish the release, of the prisoners. In this labour of love they not unfrequently expended between one and two hundred pounds. There were also Budhuks by adoption, but these were never allowed to eat with the hereditary robbers, though they might smoke the same hookah. As a matter of choice they preferred to avoid bloodshed, but in self-defence, or to secure the success of their attack they never scrupled either to wound or to slay outright. Shoojah-ood-Dowlah, Nawab of Oude, once attempted to direct their love of enterprise into an honorable channel by enrolling 1,200 of them into a corps, commanded by their own leaders. But their depredations became so intolerable that they acquired the appropriate epithet of the "Wolf Regiment," and as they were continually mutinying they were soon afterwards disbanded. A brief narrative of a few cases of Dacoitee committed by the Budhuks will give the best idea of the system they pursued.