Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 1.djvu/105

 THE ASSAM TRIBES.

HE more or less "wild tribes, who are depicted in the following Plates, were but little known until within the last few years; yet, as has been well observed, few countries on our frontiers, are, in a commercial, statistical, or political point of view, more important than those inhabited by them.

Not only is British Assam in immediate contact with the Chinese Empire, but water communication exists, with a trifling break, throughout the route between the two countries, and its direction almost appears designed to point out the natural highways of commerce between India and China.

"Though thinly populated by straggling hordes of slowly procreating barbarians," and lying profitless in primeval jungle or in wild luxuriance of vegetation, this beautiful tract of country enjoys all the qualities requisite to render it one of the finest in the world. "Its climate is cold, healthy, and congenial to Europeans; its numerous crystal streams abound hi gold dust and masses of the solid metal; its mountains are pregnant with precious stones and silver; its atmosphere is perfumed with tea growing wild and luxuriantly, and its soil is so well adapted to all kinds of agricultural purposes, that it might be converted into one continued garden of silk, cotton, coffee, sugar, and tea, over an extent of many thousand miles."—Journal Asiatic Society, Bengal, vol. v., p. 193.

There is perhaps no country of the world, of the same extent, where so many different races of men are collected together, as in the valley and hills of Assam. Who were the aborigines of the province is still a profound mystery; and as the histories in possession of the natives themselves do not contain any record of the ages previous to the first century of the Christian era, at which time the Assam valley appears to have been a populous country, we are not likely to obtain any satisfactory solution of the question. The earliest invaders, of whom any account is extant, would seem to have come from the West, and to have established in the lower parts of the valley a Hindoo form of government over a people whom they regarded as "melech," or unclean.

Though so many years have elapsed since most of the tribes invaded the province, it is still easy to perceive the great difference of physiognomy, which