The Ethnology of India. 149 
to be something like the Mongols from beyond the Chinese wall, as 
described in recent accounts. The Lopas, &c. of Bhootan seem to 
be more difficult to deal with. Farther east are, I believe, still wilder 
Thibetan tribes. All these people are idle, but very powerful; and 
when they do work, they carry enormous loads, both men and women. 
They are said to carry up to Darjeeling as much as 250 lbs. in a 
single load. And at some of the Hill Stations on the Hastern 
Frontiers of Bengal, I understand it is the fashion that a European 
visitor is carried up the hill in a basket on the back of an old woman. 
TuE PEOPLE oF THE HastERN FRONTIER. 
The people of the very lowest hills of Bhootan and of all the low 
country at their foot are of another race, the Meches or Mechis (before 
alluded to in marking the boundaries of the Indian Aborigines), who 
~ are apparently the same as Hodgson’s “‘ Bodo.”” They are, it appears, 
now quite ascertained by their language to be Indo-Chinese of the 
Lohitic or Burmese branch of the Turanian family, a connexion 
which their physiognomy confirms. They seem to be a good-sized, 
fair, but rather yellow-looking people. They are described as rude 
in their agriculture (using the hoe, not the plongh), and erratic in 
their habits, but good-natured and tolerably industrious. They pro- 
fess a kind of debased Hinduism, but are very omnivorous in their 
habits. The Dimals are a smaller ‘but somewhat similar tribe, 
speaking a language which in some degree differs. 
Passing over the Garrow and Cossya Hills to Cachar, the Cachar 
people again are of the same race as the Mechis. So, it would appear 
(so far as I can gather), are the Nagas, Abors, and some other tribes 
in the hills bordering on Assam. There are aboriginal tribes of 
Tipperah and Munneepore, but of their ethnology I am not informed. 
In the Cossya hills are an isolated body of people of the Taic or 
Siamese race. Of this race were the Ahoms who once ruled Assam, 
as are, it appears, the Khamtis and some other tribes of the more 
distant hills of that Province; also the Shan tribes of the Burmese 
interior. The Karens are, I rather think, Lohitic. It is evident, 
however, that on this Eastern Frontier I have got into a vast 
ethnological region, with which I have no personal acquaintance, and 
with which I cannot deal farther than to point out the vast field for 
