270 Capt. Pemberton's Mission to Bootan, 1837-38. [April,, 



and as much so, by those of Cooch Behar. The crossing of a river 

 eighty yards wide is sufficient to carry one from a desert into a coun- 

 try, every incli of which is highly cultivated ; yet the richness of 

 the soil is in favour of the tracts immediately contiguous to the Hills, 

 and such are, in Assam at least, especially esteemed by the most 

 laborious part of the population, the Kacharies ; and were it not for 

 this predeliction in favour of these tracts, and the short-sightedness 

 peculiar to a native population, by which immunity from taxation is 

 preferred to security of property, the Assamese Dooars would rapidly 

 become totally depopulated. 



A gift long granted as a favour, in the eyes of an Asiatic, is soon con- 

 sidered as a right ; and although the Bootea government has received 

 some severe lessons in the shape of capturing their impregnable places, 

 and of a resumption of portion of the Plain tracts, yet the free and 

 quick restoration of the same on apologies having been made, with 

 copious professions of better behaviour in future, has been attended 

 with a very different result from that which would be occasioned by 

 gratitude. The very severe lesson which they were taught in 1836, in 

 which they were completely disgraced by being defeated by a handful 

 of sebundies, and then punished by losing a Dooar, has taught them 

 nothing. That very same Dooar, perhaps too liberally restored, has 

 been for some months seizable for arrears of tribute. Nor is this all; 

 since that restoration it would appear that their officers have become 

 more than usually insolent. I think that it may fairly be assumed, 

 that they argue on the certainty of restoration, so that a good foray 

 might possibly, if its consequences were only temporary resumption, be 

 a source of profit to them. By the plan of allowing barbarians to 

 hold country in the plains, the inhabitants of those plains lose a portion 

 of their most fertile soil ; many of them are besides exposed to all the 

 inconveniences and dangers of an unsettled frontier, for such must 

 such a frontier be ;* and hitherto it has not been attended, at least 

 in many places, with the expected effect of securing the friendship of 

 the Booteas, and the quiet of the frontier. 



But no argument can place the matter in a clearer light than the 

 facts connected with Herr Govindh, a subject of Bootan, but who is 

 now independent both of Bootan and of the English government, and 

 who therefore enjoys considerable tracts of country without paying any 

 thing for them ; nor can any thing more forcibly point out the weak- 

 ness of the Bootea nation, for not only does Herr Govindh keep them 

 in effectual check, but he has, I believe, offered to take all the Dooars 



* Occupation of such tracts is very favourable to the carrying off of slaves, an habi- 

 tual practice I have no doubt with the Booteas. 



