470 Narrative of an Expedition into, §c. [[June, 



made from rice flour and Bajara seed. Their main street is a 

 receptacle for all the filth and dirt in the place, and is most offensive. 

 In front of the houses of the greater folks are strung up the bones of 

 the animals with which they have feasted the villagers, whether tigers, 

 elephants, cows, hogs, dogs, or monkeys, or ought else, for it signifies 

 little what comes to their net. They have very fine large straight 

 backed cows and buffaloes ; they have also goats, hogs, and fowls, but 

 no ducks or geese. On each side of their villages are stockades and a 

 ditch, which is filled with Pangees, or pointed bamboos, and on the 

 sloping sides of the ridge the earth is cut away and a wall built up ; 

 these fortified villages would make a formidable resistance to any 

 force without fire-arms, but they are generally overlooked by neigh- 

 bouring heights, which disclose the whole interior economy of the 

 place. They cultivate rice in the valleys between mountains, and 

 several other kinds of grain (names unknown) also a very fine fla- 

 voured kind of purple vetch. I was informed that cotton did not 

 grow in the higher mountains, and that they got what is procured from 

 the lower hill Nagas. The peach tree grows in a most luxurious state 

 round the different villages, I also saw an apple tree off which we got 

 great abundance of fine large wild apples, which were greedily de- 

 voured by the whole party. The Angamees get all their iron instru- 

 ments from the Munipore Nagas ; they are great wanderers, and make 

 incursions into Munipore itself, and carry away children, who are sold 

 up in the Hills. I met several who had been seized in that manner, 

 and who had adopted the wild Naga customs, and were unwilling to 

 return ; Semker is a great mart for this kind of trade. The Anga- 

 mees have no idea of ploughing or agriculture, or of preparing the 

 ground, and sowing crops, in the way civilized nations do. The poorer 

 classes make their cloths from the pith of a nettle which is procurable 

 in great abundance, and which makes a very fine fibred hemp. The bay 

 leaf is a native of the higher mountains, as also a small species of 

 wild orange. The country between the Sumoogoding ridge and Dhej- 

 na is remarkably fine, particularly so on the banks of the Dhunsiree, 

 which much resembles the species of forest scenery found in Ame- 

 rica, and remains uncultivated only from the fear that is entertained 

 by all the ryots, &c. of these wild Angamees. The Dhunsiree, I should 

 think, would be navigable for canoes at parts of the year up to the 

 point I crossed it. 



