1852.1 Notes on the Heumd or "Shendoos" 207 



Notes on the Heumd or " Shendoos" a tribe inhabiting the hills 

 North of Arracan. By Capt. S. R. Tickell, 3\st J5. N. I. 



The immense tract of forest and mountains, intervening between the 

 valley of the Irawaddy in Burmah, and the alluvion of Arracan, is inha- 

 bited by wild and partly independent hill tribes, whose intercourse is 

 confined almost solely to themselves ; the communications of each class 

 being limited to the neighbouring one. Those bordering on the popu- 

 lous and comparatively civilized tracts under our Government, have 

 been described [I believe in the pages of this journal] by more expe- 

 rienced narrators than myself. But some of the more remote and wild 

 sub- divisions of these people have not yet come within observation, 

 and amongst these the Shendoos, though well known by name and 

 repute in Arracan, have never yet been visited by the people of the 

 plains, nor has a single specimen of this race been seen, I believe, either 

 by Mugh or European in Arracan, until 1850 when two emissaries or 

 spies from them met me at a hill village some distance up the Koladyn 

 river. And again this year, when two more, a chief and his follower 

 ventured as far as Akyab itself, and from these I collected the few 

 details here given of this people. 



The Koladyn or Gyatchafa river runs in a direction from N. N. W. 

 to S. S. E. At about 80 miles from its mouth the alluvion ceases, and 

 a mass of hills abruptly commences without any undulating or table- 

 land between. The ranges are low with insulated bordering patches 

 at first, but soon rise in mass after mass — tier upon tier — to the 

 Yeomatoung range to the Eastward, and the " Blue Mountains" on 

 the Chittagong side. These hills are chiefly (if not entirely) of 

 sandstone, excessively steep, buried in jungul, and contiguous, leav- 

 ing deep narrow water-courses between. The two largest of these, 

 directly tributary to the Koladyn are the Peekhyoung, falling into it 

 at its right or Westerly bank in Lat. 21° N. and just where the hilly 

 country begins, and the Meekhyoung entering on the opposite shore in 

 about Lat. 21° 15'. This (the latter) stream which is about a hundred 

 yards wide at its mouth and very deep, runs from a N. E. direction 

 between steep-rounded hills for about 10 miles from the inlet, and 

 then trending gradually round comes down from due North, collecting 



