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Notes on the Kasia Hills, and People. By Lieut. H. Yule, Bengal 



Engineers. 



A traveller approaching the Kasia Hills from the south, must in 

 spite of the tameness of their general profile, be struck by the singular 

 feature of a high sandstone precipice, which runs like an artificial scarp 

 for miles along their face, with its upper crest straight, sharp and almost 

 perfectly horizontal. Even when the precipice is interrupted for a space 

 by a jungly acclivity, this sharp crest continues equally defined by the 

 sudden cessation of the forest at its level. 



As we enter the first low range of limestone hills, if instead of follow- 

 ing the beaten road to Cherra Poonjee, which mounts by bold staircases 

 and zigzags to the table land, we turn aside to track the Wa-lingtia, one 

 of the clear hill streams which so soon are to degenerate into dull 

 Bengallee nullas, we shall be better able to judge of Kasia scenery 

 than those, who keeping the highway are so apt to speak disparagingly 

 of the beauty of these hills. For two or three miles the path lies in a 

 narrow gorge. Rocks or woody steeps rise so directly from the water 

 as to leave but a narrow footing. You see by the constantly recurring 

 rapids, how quickly you are ascending. Sometimes, however, you find 

 a broad reach of deep, still water, swarming with the black backs of 

 large fish. In an angle of the rock is perhaps a Kasia fish-trap. An en- 

 closure of bamboos and matting has its narrow entrance fitted with a 

 trap- door, the fisher scatters his bait within, and sits concealed in a 

 little hut, watching till the fish swarm below. He then slips his cord, 

 the door runs down, and he proceeds to land his victims at leisure. 

 Issuing from the defile the river branches on the left, from which flows 

 the smaller stream, (the Wa-lingdeki,) opens the magnificent valley 

 of Mausmai. It is of a horse-shoe form ; two -thirds up its steep sides 

 still runs the clear precipice of some eight hundred feet in height, with 

 its even crest, seeming to bar all access to the upper regions. Over 

 it, side by side, with an unbroken fall leap five or six cascades. Through 

 the great height, the white waters seem to descend with a slow, waver- 

 ing motion. The path through the valley is shaded by groves of the 

 orange and citron, the jack and the betel- palm, mixed with stately 

 forest trees, many of them entwined with pawn, and here or there a 

 huge India rubber tree or banyan. In their shade the pine-apple grows 



