NOVELTIES. 463 



Day by day, as I marched, I persisted in my enquiries. One 

 officer only, a Manipuri, who commanded a number of detach- 

 ments scattered about the hills in the neighbourhood of Noong- 

 zae-ban, or rather with that as a centre, in stockades, as a 

 protection against Looshai raids, assured me that once in 

 former years he had himself seen the Loe-nin-koi in the Jhiri 

 Valley, a good deal south of where I crossed it and near the 

 Looshai border. 



Arrived at Manipur, " from the Minister down to the Clerk of 

 the Crown," I gave no one any peace about the Loe-nin-koi; 

 but all to no purpose. No one had ever seen the bird ; the 

 Maharaja, who alone has the right to keep these tail feathers, 

 very kindly offered* me a bunch of them, and he sent out strin- 

 gent orders to all his officers in the south of the district to 

 procure specimens of the bird, and really did all he could to 

 get these ; but all to no purpose. 



So time passed and the Loe-nin-koi bacame daily more and 

 more of a myth, the more so that after all ordinary methods 

 of getting the bird had failed, it began to be suggested that 

 " there never was no such bird," that perhaps the feathers grew 

 on trees, or were brought from some far distant country. 

 Still I stuck to it that that Loe-nin-koi I had to get, and I 

 hope my good friends, the two Chief Ministers, have forgiven 

 me for the way in which I worried them about this phoenix. 

 The Maharaja himself, however, got interested, and when after 

 working the central part of Manipur I started for the south, 

 I was, through his kindness and that of Colonel Johnstone, the 

 Political Agent, to whose support and friendship I was mainly 

 indebted for whatever little success attended my explorations, 

 armed with full powers to get at the Loe-nin-koi, if within the 

 compass of the resources of the State. 



At the south of the Manchar Lake we got together the 

 most important officers of the country further south, and my 

 Envoy made them understand that the bird had to be got. It 

 was not distinctly said that every one would have their heads 

 chopped off if we did'nt get it, but a vague gloomy cloud of 

 awful possible eventualities was discreetly left to veil the vista. 



My Envoy and the officers had confabs off and on lasting a 

 week ; the exact localities nearest to us where the bird occurred 

 were ascertained from old villagers, summoned from the 

 more eouthern fortified villages, but the hitch was this — 

 although just within the nominal boundaries of the State, and 

 in a tract where in past time there were scattered Manipuri 

 villages, of late years the Kamhows had so harried the country 

 that it had been entirely deserted, and no Manipuri could get 

 within ten miles of the nearest known haunt without the cer- 

 tainty of being murdered. On the other hand, if we were to 



