266 Visit to the Hills near the Soobanshiri River. QNo. 160. 



cows would, I have no doubt, give a large supply of milk ; but the 

 Meris have not yet found this out. I asked them to procure some 

 for me, but received the usual answer, " Meris don't know how, not 

 our custom." The females appear tame, and submit to be tethered ; 

 the bulls rove their own masters, but do not wander far from the 

 tethered females, so are in a measure tethered too; just now they 

 all roam where they please, but when the crops are on the ground 

 a mountain or so is fenced round by strong timbers from tree to tree, 

 and into this enclosure they are driven, and remain till the harvest is 

 stored. They have pigs and poultry in plenty, and a few goats. I 

 suppose there are no people on the face of the earth, more utterly igno- 

 rant of every thing connected with the arts than are the Hill Meris. 

 With the sole exception of the bands and other articles of bamboo cane 

 and fibres above-mentioned, which the women are everlastingly making, 

 every thing they use is imported ; were their communications directly 

 with the plains, and indirectly by means of the intervening tribes, with 

 the civilized countries on the other side of the great range cut off, the use 

 of metal and of women's clothes would be lost to them. The Abors can 

 forge themselves daws, but the Meris know not the art. The most 

 distant tribes manufacture coarse cotton cloths ; but though the Meris 

 are in constant communication with them, as well as with us, they 

 have not the remotest idea of weaving. They cannot journey two or 

 three days from their village, without having to cross a considerable 

 river. If it be not fordable, a rough raft of Kakoo bamboos is hastily 

 constructed for the occasion ; but though constantly requiring them, 

 and annually using them, they have never yet attempted to construct 

 a canoe : this is the more strange, as the Abors of the Dabong push a 

 considerable trade in canoes cut in the rough. I suppose that until the 

 Meris discovered the fertile plains of Assam, which they were first led 

 to visit by having killed birds in whose bellies they found rice, and dis- 

 covered by proceeding in the direction of their flight, they were 

 mere savage hunters ; the skins of beasts their only clothing, and the 

 flesh their chief, if not only food. 



Could they be stimulated to a more industrious course of life, they 

 might considerably improve their commercial relations with us. The 

 great rivers that enter their country abound in gold grains ; the process 



