As I left the presence of the Sahib and had reached the road, a rather elderly Hindu of fine appearance threw himself on his knees in front of me, and putting his arms around my legs, he touched his forehead upon my boots several times. This was done so quickly that I had not time to check him. Then lifting up his head and still on his knees, he held up a paper in one hand and five rupees in the other. He said that the ofiun walla sahib had made him sign a contract by which he was to cultivate a certain amount of land for opium, and had given him five rupees as an advance on the crop. He said that it was contrary to his religion, against his caste and his dastur or custom to raise opium; that he wanted to raise food for his bal batchas, children, and begged of me to intercede with the sahib and get his contract annulled. He pleaded most piteously. I lifted him up and talked with him. I told him that the sahib was a Government officer, while I was only a zemindar, and that if I went to him he might become angry and double the contract. I certainly was disposed to help him, but I knew that if I interceded for him I would have hundreds of others at my feet, and there would be no end of a hullabaloo, and the sahib would have his own way in the end and make it even worse for the people. “Why awaken sleeping leopards?” “It is no use to sharpen thorns,” are common Hindu proverbs. I learned afterwards that numbers went to the Collector of the District, who was as much of an autocrat and a despot in his way as was the other. He always resented any one foraging in his pasture. He wrote an indignant letter to the opium agent, and the latter replied that if the collector would attend to his own business he might find enough to do. Such was the commencement of opium growing in that district. There were about a million people in the district, and I doubt if any one of them had ever seen a poppy head until it was raised under the forced contracts of the opium agent. I was well acquainted with the district, had traveled everywhere in it, and had never seen a sign of opium either among the people or in the fields; and I question if there ever had been an ounce of opium used unless in medicine given by the doctors. The people did not want it in any shape, either for use or cultivation.