1855.] Notes on Northern Gacliar. &5& 



great pride in their arms and profession. Any number of the tribe 

 could now be enlisted, so great is their desire for service, and this 

 presents a most sure way of eventually quieting the people, those 

 entertained acting in a measure as hostages for the good conduct of 

 their village. 



Left undisturbed from external aggression, the internal feuds 

 among the tribes being put to an end, subject to the influence of a 

 powerful and benign Government, opened out by. lines of good 

 permanent road which are every where in projection, and under- 

 going with all a very slight taxation, there is every chance of North 

 Cachar eventually repaying the caro and expense which is being- 

 lavished upon it. Plunged, as the inhabitants at present are, in the 

 darkest ignorance, even when contrasted with the population of any- 

 other portion of our territories, trusting as they do solely to them- 

 selves for every article of consumption, and unacquainted as they 

 are with every portion of the world beyond their own hills, it would 

 be folly to look immediately for the production of such effects. But 

 it only requires the diffusion of a little enlightenment, and a proper 

 direction of the energies of the people, when that enlightenment 

 has developed their enterprise, to make the inhabitants of these hills 

 a nourishing and happy community. The partial civilization which 

 has reached the Caeharees has been inculcated by those least quali- 

 fied to administer it. They sought from the Bengali am labs of our 

 courts the arts by which to acquire preferment and use power. But 

 this is no type of the effect that might be produced were the education 

 of these wild and simple people placed in other hands, were only a 

 little of that labour which is daily being expended, with so little 

 success, in uprooting the prejudices of stiff-necked Hindus and 

 Muhammedans, applied to the Kookies and Nagas. 



Throughout India I know of no field for missionary labour which 

 gives promise of such fertility as the hills of Northern Cachar, and 

 yet no missionary has penetrated them. Here are no mighty rocks 

 in the shape of brahmanical philosophies to be blasted. No deep 

 ravines like Muhammedan sensualism to be filled up, but the field 

 lies open for cultivation, and merely requires the rank weeds of evil 

 passions to be kept down, and the small stones of petty superstition 

 to be lifted, to be ready for the fructification of the good seed, 



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