1844.] Notes on the Kasia Hills, and People. 623 



neighbourhood of the British settlement are by no means gross feeders. 

 But I once saw labourers who were at work in the garden, carry off a 

 dead leopard to feast on, with great glee ; and in some of the northern 

 villages, a species of caterpillar is eaten, and sold in the markets. 

 They all enjoy flesh occasionally, especially pork ; there is always hot roast 

 pork for sale in some corner of the bazar on market day. Some individuals 

 and families have a superstitious objection to different kinds of food, 

 and will not allow such to be brought into their houses. This has a re- 

 markable parallel among a race of Negroes of South Eastern Africa, as 

 the following passage (quoted in the Edinburgh Review for January 

 1837) from Captain Owen's Narrative, will shew. " It is prohibited in 

 many families to eat certain animals' flesh, such as in some beef, in 

 others elephants, others hippopotamus. It is said that if any family 

 transgress this rule, and eat of the forbidden flesh their teeth will drop 

 out," &c. From millet, they make large quantities of spirits, of which I am 

 sorry to say there is a great consumption at all the bazars ; and on the 

 evening of Cherra market-day, one may see many riotous parties stag- 

 gering to the verge of the valley, where in that state they descend 

 the ladders before described, without fear or accident ; for the peo- 

 ple of the vallies are more addicted to drunkenness than those of the 

 table land. This millet forms the principal grain cultivation in the 

 vallies near Cherra Poonjee. In the end of the cold weather large tracts 

 of the jungle are burnt, and the seed scattered on the stony slopes. 

 The ground gives one or two crops, and then a new tract is prepared 

 in like manner. Under this process the woods in the neighbourhood of 

 Cherra are becoming rapidly thinned. 



The Kasias are utterly unacquainted with any art of weaving, nearly 

 all the usual articles of their dress, peculiar as they are, are made for 

 them by other tribes bordering on the Assam valley. They manufac- 

 ture a small quantity of caoutchouc, which they use principally for 

 smearing baskets in which to keep honey, &c. By the way, the caout- 

 chouc tree answers better than the Banyan to the well known description 

 in Milton (or rather in his authority, Pliny) of the Indian fig. The for- 

 mer can much more reasonably lay claim, to leaves " broad as Amazo- 

 nian targe" than any which 



" To Indian known 

 In Malabar or Deccan spreads her arms." 



