All this produce is brought on the backs of bullocks,
because there is no road from the districts whence they obtain it,
over which a wheeled carriage can be drawn with safety; and, as this
mode of transit is very expensive, the price of the produce, when it
reaches the capitals, around which these local establishments are
concentrated, becomes very high. They must pay a price equal to the
collective cost of purchasing and bringing this substance from the
most distant districts, to which they are at any time obliged to have
recourse for a supply, or they will not be supplied; and, as there
cannot be two prices for the same thing in the same market, the wheat
and gram produced in the neighbourhood of one of these Bundelkhand
capitals fetch as high a price there as that brought from the most
remote districts on the banks of the Nerbudda river; while it costs
comparatively nothing to bring it from the former lands to the
markets. Such lands, in consequence, yield a rate of rent much
greater compared with their natural powers of fertility than those of
the remotest districts whence produce is drawn for these markets or
capitals; and, as all the lands are the property of the Rajas, they
drew all those rents as revenue.
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