1841.] Account of Arakan, 703 



(which spring up very thickly in two or three years after a hill side 

 has been cleared,) that sufficient soil is accumulated to nourish grain. 

 Each returning season, then, brings for these mountaineers the toil and 

 hardship of a new clearing. They are unacquainted with the terrace 

 cultivation of other hill countries ; indeed the hills appear too precipi- 

 tous for it to be practicable. Spots favourable for clearings are by 

 no means plentiful. The people have sometimes to go one, two, or 

 more days' journey from their village, in small parties here and there, 

 to sow their grain. In these separate clearings, they erect temporary 

 . sheds, raised from fifteen to twenty feet from the ground, and remain 

 there until the work is finished, when they return to the village, 

 leaving perhaps two or three hands to watch the crop. These people 

 instead of the high raised sheds commonly used, sometimes sleep at 

 night up in trees, where they have made a convenient resting place 

 with interwoven branches, and a few split bamboos bound together 

 with strong creepers, which interlace these forests in profusion. This 

 practice has perhaps given rise to the tale, that some hill tribes had 

 no regular dwellings, but lived in trees, more like apes than men.* 



After a village has remained in one site for two or three years, all 

 the culturable spots in the vicinity are cleared and exhausted. f The 



* The tree-living Kukis, represented to live in the hills and forests east of the 

 Chittagong district, have attracted considerable attention. The whole account of their 

 cannibalism and tree-dwelling I regard as fable. There may perhaps have been 

 instances of some of these savage tribes offering human sacrifices. I have had inter- 

 course with very " pretty savages" in the wild country bordering on Arakan to the 

 E. and N. E ; all of whom had comfortable houses, even the poorest of them far more 

 roomy than the wretched hovels of Bengalee peasants ; these savages had intercourse 

 •with other tribes beyond them, but had never heard of tree-living and human-flesh- 

 devouring people, though they had plenty of wonderful stories to tell of Amazonian 

 tribes, where male children were destroyed, and of others who by magic could make 

 themselves invulnerable. But these best authority is that of the Khyoung-thas^ men 

 of Burman race, who live among the hill tribes, and are comparatively civilized. 

 Some of these I have known who had been taken as slaves, and passed to distant 

 independent tribes, and subsequently regained their freedom. These men had never 

 heard of tree-living men. The name Kuki was unknown to all, but the same tribes 

 are called by many names. The tale has, I suspect, been received from Bengalee 

 narrators in the Chittagong district, and incautiously received as correct. What 

 European can vouch for its truth ? 



f 1 know two cases, one beyond the British territory, where tribes had a wide 

 range of territory, and jealously guarded against any clearing being made in it by 

 other tribes. They have thus kept their villages on the same site for more than 

 twenty years, or crops, for so they reckon time. One of these villages was perched 

 upon a rock almost inaccessible, it was therefore a favourite position, one not easily 

 surprised. 



4u 



