fl§Q, ._ ■ ■ ■ . STATISTICAL SKETCH 



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necessarily have been peopled from the table land of Tartary, or the plains 

 of Hindustan. Judging, however, from the personal appearance of the inhabi- 

 tants, their religion, and language, the latter appears the most probable, as 

 had the first settlers been Tartars, some communication would doubtlessly 

 -have been maintained with the mother country, by subsequent migration from 

 thence. The original occupants of the country, whenever they may have 

 come, would appear to have been completely uncivilized, and wholly igno- 

 rant of agriculture and of the common arts of life. At a period, comparatively 

 speaking, not very remote, the celebrity of the Himalaya, in the Hindu 



■ Mythology, by inducing a constant resort of pilgrims, led to the gradual colo- 

 nization of the country, by natives of various parts of Hindustan, who intro- 

 duced their religion and knowledge ; and the Country having, by these means, 

 been rendered an object of competition, its invasion and conquest soon 

 followed. Such are the current traditions, and their simplicity entitles them 

 to consideration. 



Of the aborigines, a small remnant, pertinaciously adhering to the customs 

 of their ancestors, are to be found in the Ra'wats oy Rajis. They are now 

 reduced to about twenty families, who wander in the rude freedom of savage 

 life, along the line of forests situated under the eastern part of the Himalaya^ 

 in this province. In all probability the outcastes, or Horns, are in part 

 descendants from tliem ; a conjecture that is founded chiefly on two 

 circumstances, first, the great difference in the personal appearance of the 

 Horns from the other inhabitants, many of the former having curly hair, 



■ inclining to wool, and being all extremely black, and secondly, the almost 

 universal state of hereditary slavery in which the Horns are found here. 

 With the origin of this slavery, even the proprietors are unacquainted, it 

 may, however, easily be explained, by supposing a part of the aborigines 

 to have been seized, and reduced to that condition by the first colonists 

 above-mentioned* 



