494 WILD SPORTS OF BURMA AND ASSAM 



only used it as a burial-place. His idea was for forming the 

 station round where he built himself a little bungalow. But 

 the Government with its usual blundering must needs send 

 up a committee of old Indian officers who had lived in the 

 plains all their lives, and had commanded Oude men to 

 report on the eligibility of the proposed site. They were of 

 course frozen to death, and reported on it unfavourably, as 

 unfit for native troops, forgetting that it was not proposed to 

 locate Bengal Sepoys there, but Gurkhas, whose homes were 

 in Nepal at an elevation of 10,000 feet above sea-level. So 

 as a medium, Shillong, which lies in a hollow, was fixed upon. 

 It is also subject to certain diseases, and even to cholera, but 

 is, of course, an improvement on Gowhatty, and since the 

 province was made into a Chief Commissionership the can- 

 tonment and Civil lines have been greatly extended, and now 

 reach to Captain Rowlatt's original site. The cart road, laid 

 out and commenced by myself, has been finished, and now 

 light covered-in carriages ply between it and Gowhatty, and 

 a person can reach it within twelve hours after landing. 



Going from Shillong to Jowai, the first stage is Nurting, 

 whare there is a Welsh Mission. In my day, the dak bunga- 

 low there was always occupied by the Welsh parson, who 

 seemed to have nothing to do but breed children. I never 

 saw his wife, but she must have been a most prolific woman, 

 for there were some dozen or more children of all sizes, with 

 intervals of barely nine months between them. The school- 

 house was neglected, the pigs had the run of it ; it was in a 

 swamp surrounded with human and pigs' ordure a more 

 filthy and disgusting place I never saw. 



There is fair shooting and hunting ; there are barking deer, 

 pheasants, snipe, duck, and woodcock. Some of the largest 

 cromlechs on these hills are there ; the ducks rest on certain 

 tanks, but if disturbed soon fly far, far away. The only 

 place where I have seen coveys of partridges in the East was 

 on Briggs' road within four or five miles of Jowai. They are 

 peculiar to the hills, and at times are very plentiful. The 

 Cossyahs kill them by throwing loaded sticks at them, and I 

 have been offered as many as a dozen as the result of one 

 man's shikar in a day. The birds are, I believe, the ruddy- 



