Page:A Statistical Account of Assam Vol 1 GoogleBooksID tIVJAAAAMAAJ.pdf/14



These volumes deal with the Province of Assam as constituted in 1874. The tract then withdrawn from the Lieutenant-Governorship of Bengal, and formed into a separate Chief-Commissionership, consists of two river valleys with a lofty hill tract between. On the north, the Brahmaputra Valley covers an area of 20,683 square miles, or one-half the whole Province, and gives the name of its former dominant race, the Ahams, to Assam. From its southern edge rises the hill country, a wild broken region of 14,447 square miles, inhabited by non-Aryan tribes. To the south of these intervening mountains, again, lies the smaller valley of the Bárak and Surmá, extending over 6668 square miles. The whole is divided for administrative purposes into eleven Districts, with an aggregate population of 4,132,019 persons, and an area of 41,798 square miles, yielding an average of 99 inhabitants to the square mile.

The preparation of the Statistical Account of Assam was