328 CACHAR. Chap. XXXT. 



water, and therefore in universal use for boat-building. 

 The toon is also cut, with red sandal-wood {Adenan- 

 thera pavonina) ; also Nageesa,* Mesua ferrea, which 

 is highly valued for its weight, strength, and dura- 

 bility: Aquilaria agallocha, the eagle-wood, a tree yielding 

 uggur oil, is also much sought for its fragrant wood, 

 which is carried to Silhet and Azmerigunj, where it 

 is broken up and distilled. Neither teak, sissoo, sal, nor 

 other Dipterocarpi, are found in these forests. 



Porpoises, and both the long and the short -nosed alligator, 

 ascend the Soormah for 120 miles, being found beyond 

 Silchar, which place we reached on the 22nd, and were 

 most hospitably received by Colonel Lister, the political 

 agent commanding the Silhet Light Infantry, who was 

 inspecting the Cookie levy, a corps of hill-natives which had 

 lately been enrolled. 



The station is a small one, and stands about forty feet 

 above the river, which however rises half that height in the 

 rains. Long low spurs of tertiary rocks stretch from the 

 Tipperah hills for many miles north, through the swampy 

 J heels to the river ; and there are also hills on the opposite 

 or north side, but detached from the Cookie hills, as the 

 lofty blue range twelve miles north of the Soormah is 

 called. All these mountains swarm with tigers, wild buf- 

 falos, and boars, which also infest the long grass of the 

 J heels. 



The elevation of the house we occupied at Silchar was 



* There is much dispute amongst oriental scholars about the word Nageesa ; 

 the Bombay philologists refer it to a species of Garcinia, whilst the pundits on the 

 Calcutta side of India consider it to be Mesua ferrea. Throughout our travels 

 in India, we were struck with the ixndue reliance placed on native names of plants, 

 and information of all kinds; and the pertinacity with which each linguist 

 adhered to his own crotchet as to the application of terms to natural objects, and 

 their pronunciation. It is a very prevalent, but erroneous, impression, that 

 savage and half-civilised people have an accurate knowledge of objects of natural 

 history, and a uniform nomenclature for them. 



