ASAM AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. 403 



and that the Bhotiyas allude to the veritable Sampo passing their country 

 to the north. All the more wealthy Abors have cloaks of Thibetan wool- 

 lens ; indeed, scarce a man is seen amongst them without some article of 

 the manufacture of Thibet. They wear large necklaces of blue beads, which 

 they esteem very highly, and they profess that they are not procurable 

 now ; they look exactly like turquoises, and have the same hue of greenish 

 blue — but a close examination discovers in them minute bubbles, marking 

 the agency of fire; they are extremely hard, but the only one I could get 

 possession of, I broke with a hammer, and it had exactly the fracture of fine 

 Chinese porcelain. 



The very rude tribes, of the existence of which the Asamese have an 

 idea, and mention by the names of Bibors and Barkans, and mentioned 

 by the Subanshiri Abors, under the latter name, as residing to their north, 

 may, perhaps, be the Sho-ptra of Father Georgi^s,* whose account of it 

 need any concurrent testimony, is completely corroborated by a singular 

 note in Persian on a map from Nepal, which I have recently seen; they 

 were to the south of Takpo, where the Capuchins had an establishment. 



After our return to our station at Shigaru Ghat, we resolved to try 

 how far we could get up the banks of the D thong, and ascertain the truth 

 or falsehood of the Abor reports. The first evening we halted at the mouth 

 of the Shiko, in latitude 28° 05', at the end of a long easterly reach of 

 the river, beyond the Past villages, and within sight of Padil, which is 

 to the north, upon a round hill. The next day we found that the Past 

 people had taken the alarm, and we had moved but a few hundred yards 



* Quod populi hi Meridionales labia gerant incissa Sho-kalia-ptra vocantur. Slio enfrn Meri- 

 diem, Kha os, and ptra incissum designant. In cissionibus infundunt colores varios, rubrum, fla- 

 vum, cceruleum, alios-que. Pingunt ita Parentes indelebili varietate noatarum tencllula labia int'an- 

 lium, ut cum adoleverint ore semper picti, ac variegati appareant. 



