JOURNAL 



OF 



THE ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



No. 52— April, 1836. 



I. — Account of the Mountain Tribes on the Extreme N. E. Frontier of 

 Bengal. By J. McCosh, Civil Assistant Surgeon, Godlpdra. 

 [Read at the meeting of the 4th Nov. 1835] 



The following pages have been compiled from original manuscripts 

 lately put into my hands by Captain Jenkins, Agent to the Governor 

 General on the N. E. Frontier, with kind permission to make what use 

 of them I thought proper. Some of these letters were written from his 

 own personal observation; others by Major White, Political Agent for 

 Assam ; as also by Mr. Bruce, commanding the Gun Boats at Sud- 

 dia, so that the information contained in this digest may be relied 

 upon. From the lively interest lately taken in the regions hereafter 

 described, on account of tea growing there indigenously, and the 

 probability of their speedily assuming an important aspect in the 

 statistics of India, any facts concerning such districts will, I hope, 

 prove not uninteresting to the public. 



Few nations bordering upon the British dominions in India are 

 less generally known than tho^e inhabiting the extreme N. E. Fron- 

 tier of Bengal ; and yet, in a commercial, a statistical, or a political point 

 of view, no country is more important. There our territory of Assam 

 is situated in almost immediate contact with the empires of China and 

 Ava, being separated from each by a narrow belt of mountainous country, 

 possessed by barbarous tribes of independent savages, and capable of 

 being crossed over in the present state of communication in 10 or 12 

 days. From this mountain range, navigable branches of the great rivers 

 of Nankin, of Cambodia, of Martaban, of Ava, and of Assam derive their 

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