Pe. Be ; Im add * a,. THE LOOSHAIS IN PEACE AND WAR. BY BENJAMIN AITKEN. —————— (Reprinted from ‘‘ The Times of India’’ and ‘The Englishman’’ of March and April, 1891.) Bombay: PRINTED AT THE ‘“‘ BOMBAY GUARDIAN” MISSION PRESS. —— SS } { | | | Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2023 with funding from | Columbia University Libraries \ | | | * https ‘//archive.org/details/looshaisinpeacewO0aitk THE LOOSHAIS IN PEACE AND WAR. BY BENJAMIN AITKEN, (Reprinted from “ The Times of India” and “ The Englishman” of March and April, 1891.) $$ CHAPTER I.—THE WAY TO CHANGSIL. Don’t go by Chittagong. The Koladyne looks tempting on the map, but Thanruma is at large, and one or two other Chiefs who ought to be in custody or out of the way ; so you may find that stream to be the bourne whence no traveller returns. Therefore make a circumbendibus and strike Changsil from the north. Moreover, pronounce it after Chang, the Chinaman, who possibly founded the old bazar at the place. The Hunterian spelling has so habituated people to diacritical marks that when the mark is left out, as it usually is, one is apt to say Chungsil. Make your way from Calcutta first by rail and steamer to Ienchuganj. If you have not a through ticket, you may have to wait a quarter of an hour at Goalundo because the Baboo has gone away with the key. Never mind: it is all right: you can pass the time watching the tea-garden coolies crowding on to the steamer. They push and pull and scream worse than the Ooriyas on the Chandbali boats, and one won- ders why the simple device of a few barriers along the passage way is not adopted, especially as women with loads on their heads and babies in their arms get the worst of the rough handling. After a pleasant day’s steaming with a skipper who may be a very DeQuincey in conversation, you change at Narainganj into a smaller boat, with more comfortable cabins and a serang for a captain. Do not be alarmed if you hear that there was cholera on the last boat, or is to be cholera on the next. That is simply Indian life. The three Looshai Chiefs who were recently deported through Silchar to Tezpur went in charge of an officer and thirty sepoys, and three of the guard fell victims to the disease at Narainganj. About the same time a Punjab regiment (2) 6r detachment, going home after good service in these parts, lost, some say eleven some say seventeen, of its strength by cholera. So fortify yourself with your specific, whatever that be, and puff vigorously at your cigar if you are asmoker. It is also good to tell cholera stories from your past experience, especially if you have ever been in the midst of an epidemic. Crocodiles and porpoises will help to beguile the time, with a few birds and an occasional flock of ducks or geese. But be sure of your shooting before you fire at them. Mr. X. winged a whistling teal, and then persuaded the serang to give it chase in the jolly- boat, from which he fired eight more cartridges at his game before we had the tough morselfor dinner. Youreach Fenchuganj about the middle of the third day after leaving Calcutta, and that is the terminus of the steamer route in the dry season. Let me say, before parting from these boats, that the servants are clean and attentive, the table is excellent and abundant, and the charges are moderate. From Fenchuganj you next make your way ina Native craft, about the size of a Calcutta dingy, to Silchar. But if you have a friend in Sylhet, borrow his horse and ride fifteen miles to that place. Sylhet is less important asa European station than Silchar, and more important as a Native town. It would be difficult to find another town with sucha large population living in huts: and the huts are not clustered together, as if the place were a collection of villages, but are spread out, with yards and compounds between, while the whole is embedded out of sight in a jungle of bamboos and other trees. In the middle is a hill about the size of Cumballa Hill at Bombay, looking from the top of which you suppose yourself in a wilder- ness of jungle that reaches to the horizon, whereas you are surrounded by some 30,000 people, whom a Roderick Dhu might call into sight with a flourish. Moreover, they are a more than usually prosperous people, and therefore more than usually litigious, offering an El Dorado to that profession of benefactors known as pleaders. They are also fond of club law, and often go to the cutcherry as prisoners when they might have gone as litigants. ‘Things appear to be worse in Cachar in this respect, for out of 400 prisoners at work on the road to Changsil, no fewer than 300 are there for rioting. Tell the E. B.S. Railway to put Fenchuganj, Karimganj, and Silchar on that two-anna 3 route-map of theirs: it is too good a map to be spoiled by the want of three such important places. Silchar is the capital of the district of Cachar. \Whether you go to Silchar from Fenchuganj or from Sylhet, the time will be three or four days if you promise the boatmen bakhshish, and four or five days if you do not. The boat is towed along the bank by the boatmen, who might almost cope with a Chinaman in walking day and night over rocks and mud. When you get tired of lying down in the boat, you can get out and walk. You will observe that the dogs do not come out of the villages and bark at you, according to the common experience in India. The people being largely Muhammadans, who hold dogs to be unclean, there are fewer of them, and those few seem to be free from caste antipathies and to believe in the brotherhood of man. If you can borrow horses you may ride to Silchar while your baggage goes by boat: the distance is 74 miles, and the road is good. Of the four ways of acquiring a horse, you are confined in Assam to buying and borrowing; one is not to be hired, and stealing is dangerous. At Silchar you will see a strangely mixed Hindoo and Muhammadan population, with uncouth Nagasand ornamental Manipuris. It is an administrative fiction to call the Surma Valley Assam. Oudh is more the North-Western Provinces fiemecaciar 1s Assam. ‘Ihere is less, Assamese there than English. There used, in the olden time, to be a Raja of Cachar, who was probably himself a usurper, but his territory was over- run by Manipuri marauders, and after them by Burmese; and although he turned Hindoo, in the hope of consolidating his king- dom and creating an influential Brahman court, he and his people were wiped out, or else betook themselves to the hills. The Hindus had come from Bengal or further west, and they found an undisturbed asylum in Manipur, and today Gwalior and Indore are not more staunchly Brahmanical than that httle State far back among the mountains. Then the Muhammadans came and had their day. All this time the hill tribes, north and south, used to make things lively, harrying the plains, carrying off captives, and complicating the population. Under the British these tribes have one by one been subdued, and have not been slow to learn that trading in the plains pays better than marauding. Even the Looshais had learned the ( Bas) lesson, and used to do a brisk business at Bepari Bazaar, which is the name of Changsil on the maps; but unhappily when we quarrelled with their neighbours on the Koladyne, they took their part, andthe work has now to be done over again. Two other causes of confusion in the population of Cachar deserve to be noted. The district is full of garden coolies from different parts of India; and sepoys and domestic servants finding wives cheap among the Khasis and other hill tribes, provide them- selves when duty takes them there. The fact that they have left wives behind in the plains does not give them concern till it is time for them to return home; and then—but why repeat an oft-told tale? If you are not tired of the little boat, you can go on in it to Jhalnacherra, the next objective point from Silchar; it will take eight or nine days, for the river winds much in the hilly ground leading to the mountains. But the distance by road is only 50 miles, and ponies are easily borrowed; so everybody rides. At the worst I would rather walk than have any more of the boat. The intermediate ground is alternately bamboo jungle and tea- gardens. Unceasing hospitality makes the planters generous, and splendid fellows they are, sure to rally toa call to arms and defend the Government to the last. No political fads interfere with their duty: they uphold the Government because they ought. They have far too much to do with the Natives to hold indefinite or illogical views about them: they positively like the coolies, and merely laugh at the Baboos. As for the coolies, if I were not a special correspondent, I would turn garden-coolie myself. ‘They are as hale and hearty as I am, and the women wear more jewellery than oursdo. Their huts are like the model kintals which Calcutta philanthropists invented a few years ago, and are kept in better repair. They have as many cattle of their own as an African Chief, and their rice-fields would avert a famine. They indulge freely in the luxuries of litigation, rioting, and mutiny, and when they retire, they go into business in Cachar rather than return to the indigence and slavery of their own districts. Don’t tell Mr. W. S. Caine, but the planters are divided on the subject of having liquor shops about the gardens. Some dislike the liquor shops because they lose the services of their coolies for several days after pay day every month, Others are willing to put up with that inconvenience, (5) because when the coolies spend their money on drink they remain poor and do not leave the garden to set up on their own account. _ Jhalnacherra is on the border of Cachar, at the base of the Looshai Hills. It is an abandoned tea-garden ; and was a depot for troops and stores during the late expedition. It still contains a tahsildar, a telegraph office, and a few sepoys. A hill about 200 feet high is surmounted by a stockade, with a machan from _which a look-out used to be kept for Looshais. The neighbour- ing garden, now under the management of Mr. Chalmers, a keen naturalist, was the scene of Mr. Winchester’s murder in 1871. People ask sometimes what became of Mary Winchester, who was carried off then, and recovered eight months afterwards by a military expedition.* Be it known, then, that she was sent to Scotland, whence she had accompanied her father to India only a year or two before he was killed. People at Silchar and on the gardens along the way still talk kindly and sadly of Lieut- enant Swinton, who was summoned from Shillong after Captain Browne’s treacherous murder, and made a very favourable impression on Europeans and Natives as he hurried to his death between Jhalnacherra and Changsil. CHAPTER IL—BOATING ON THE DHALESHWARI. Jhalnacherra is on the border between Cachar and the Looshai Hills, and it takes five days by boat to reach Changsil. Government has just made a road from the plains, but it has not had time to supersede the old-fashioned river-route, and for the swift passage down the river will have the preference till a railway is made into the land of the Looshais. In a straight line the distance is perhaps not more than thirty miles. The river is called anything from the Hunterian Dhaleshwari to the Anglo-Indian Dully-sorry. For five laborious days the little boat is pushed along with bamboo poles, negotiating * Note added in 1g08.—Lord Roberts accompanied the expedition as Senior Staff Officer, and his “Forty-one Years in India” contains a graphic account of the land and the people and the fighting. News about the rescued child was unexpectedly published in Calcutta last year. She was sent to Elgin, her father’s native town, and passed creditably through school and college. She is now Mrs. Innes Howie, and lives in London. She helps the cause of Missions, and keeps up her interest in the scenes of her childhood, and even in the tribes whom she has such good cause to forget, ( 6 ) shallows, rocks, and fallen trees on its way, and many an ovét- turned wreck shows where the rapids have proved too much for the ingenuity and exertions of the boatmen. If I had Stanley’s pen I could match “ Darkest Africa”’ with the forests of these Looshai Hills, where the dense foliage cof towering trees, the interminable bamboo jungle, and the tangled brake and thicket, make an impenetrable shade— “ Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne’er or rarely been.” The Looshais are up on the hill-tops. Down in the lower ranges solitude reigns. All day long, but chiefly in the cool of the morning, the woods ring with the calls of countless birds which neither naturalist nor feather-hunter has yet disturbed. The musical mimicry of the bhimvaj leads the chorus ; hill bulbuls roll out their liquid notes as they frolic among the bushes; thrushes and warblers sing their own songs, wild finches, chats and pipits, titmouses and flycatchers, pipe and whistle in’ every key till there seems no end to their melody. Less musical, but not less joysome, parrots of strange wing shriek and chatter as they fly between the hills; wood-peckers of gay plumage screech with their harsh voices; the grating call of the giant hornbill, always in pairs, comes from the tallest trees; the hoot of the crow-pheasant is followed by the spread of its red wings as it sails to a further thicket; jungle cocks crow on every hand, and as the boat draws near cock and hen fly across the river with a loud cackle; kingfishers squeak, and wagtails and sandpipers twitter on both banks as they flit from reach to reach before the boat; overhead a grim hawk quits its station with a scream, to dive into a shadier tree; the azure-winged king-hunter utters its shrill soliloquy in some dark recess ; while sweetest of all the unknown calls and cries that make up the general Babel, is the “ Where you go? Where you go?” of some cuckoo or mocking-bird. Meanwhile the prospect is made up of scene after scene of enchantment. At one spot the banks attract the gaze with their grassy fringe alternated with rock and pool; then a clear stretch of bamboos display their feathery screen to the beholder’s sight, to be followed by a grove of forest trees down to the water's edge, their boughs almost meeting aloft and forming a canopy of shade and silence over the dark stream. (7 2 Again, to relieve the eye, the hillocks are open, with banks and braes like bonny Doon, and alternate growths of tall reeds and rank furze, which make one forget the jungle for a time. Another place seems to show the hand of man, as the low trees, of uniform size and look, bend over the bank for a good quarter of a mile, and no grass or weed spoils the lovers’ walk. And everywhere and always, in the background, range beyond range, stand the forest-clad mountains, dreaming of the time when lawns and gardens and tennis-courts will mock the hoary past, and Looshai B. A.’s will revere the relics of their Wallace and their Bruce. There is a spot which some forgotten poet has named “Shiva’s Seat.” No point on the hundred miles of the river's course presents a more lovely combination of light and shadow, or such a picturesque display of timber trees and verdant shrubs. There isa mirror of still water for nymphs to play in, anda grassy glade for the fairies’ dance, while beyond, the forest yawns like a cavern where goblins may sit and glare. Just in the midde of the view, and commanding all its beauties at once, a large flat rock rises out of the water, and this in some bygone day caught the fancy of a Hindoo warrior or trader with a poet’s soul, as he toiled his way toward Bepari Bazaar. Investing his god with a soul like his own, he divined that immediately Shiva had rolled the stone where it stood, that he might sit there and drink his fill of the entrancing scene. But evening falls, and darkness envelopes the undergrowth, while the trees still stand out clearly against the sky. The calls of day also give place to the sounds of night. The lungoor and the huluk monkey are heard no more, but the loud alarm of the barking deer awakes the forest. A flying squirrel floats across the space between two trees, and once seen is remembered for life. Strange owls hoot in different directions, and nightjars utter their curious note. The diminutive owl of the Himalayas pipes all night with a clear, flute-like note. It feels very strange to be alone in the darkness amid so much active life. But the hum of insect-life is wanting: mosquitoes do not trouble us, and few moths or flies come to our httle lamp. I was lying awake one night when I saw something moving among the bamboos of the boat’s roof. I first took it for a leech and then for a caterpillar, but a closer inspection revealed a centipede four inches long. This was serious, but a little ( 8 ) ingenuity killed the venomous thing, before it could disappear among the wraps and blankets of the crowded cabin. Barring a small plague of sandflies one day, this was the only thing that troubled us. It wasarelief to be out of the leech-infested jungles of Cachar, where ticks as well as leeches came out of the grass and fastened on one, and swarms of flying things peppered the face and eyes at noon as well as in the twilight. A tick, smaller than a dog-tick, attached itself to my eyelid, among the eyelashes, and caused irritation that lasted several. days. But after Jhalnacherra we were free from molestation. For five nights our boat lay moored in the heart of a forest which, according to the story-books, ought to have swarmed with tigers and bears and wolves: yet, nothing worse than an. otter came near us, and of the many sounds that rang through the night none was indicative of danger. The great gecko of the Burma hills and all this region, had its haunt in many a tree, and its deep “ geck—ko!” sounded like the call of a ghost. The lower hills, corresponding with the Himalayan Tarai, where our first night was passed, contain elephants, pig, and wild dogs, as well as tigers, which go down and kill cattle in the adjacent tea gardens. But the upper ranges seem to be devoid of large game, so that the Looshais do not shut up their cattle and pigs at night hke the Khasis, and the telegraph parties, who go straight through everything as the crow flies, bivouack in the open or under the flimsiest shelter. The most enterprizing beast in these parts is the porpoise, which ascends the river within a day’s journey of Changsil, or 2 as far as the shallow water will float its bulky body. One day | we passed a Muhammadan hermit, whose copious blessings were cut short to make time for a very unspiritual demand for bakhshish when he found that we were not disposed to stop and hear him finish. Further on was a military post with a jamadar anda dozen sepoys killing time in scanty huts. Another day we en- countered a whole fleet of boats, with Colonel Evans, five officers, and 400 sepoys of the 43rd Goorkha Rifles, who were returning from a tour, promenade, armed demonstration—call it which you will—among the Looshai Hills, and making a terrific uproar at one of the rapids. On the evening ot the fourth day, when we moored for the night, the boatmen evinced alarm, and begged that there might (79M be no loud talking, as that wouldinform the Looshais of our presence, and bring them down to loot if for nothing worse. However, we slept soundly “Until the heath-cock shrilly crew And morning dawned on Benvenue,” or whatever the Looshais call the hill towering above us. Next day about noon, we reached a point where a few Looshais are in the habit of coming down to the water to trade with passing boats, and found three men and five boys waiting for us. They were not such specimens as officers describe who have seen hundreds of the tribe: they were weak and puny, without the bones and muscles of mountaineers, and they seemed to have no idea: of barter. They innocently gave up a large bunch of unripe plantains, and all the yams they had, and begged earnestly for tobacco and salt, taking as much or as little as was giventothem. But when asked for an ornament out of his hair—an immense, clumsy pin of bright brass—one of them indicated by signs that he wanted a piece of cloth for it. They took sugar with pleasure, but craved for salt; and they were delighted to receive a box of matches each, the use of which several of them knew per- fectly well. They carried flint and steel, with a small shred of cotton cloth, in little boxes neatly cut out of solid wood, and one of the boys lost no time in lighting an awkward pipe of bamboo. A cigar amused them, but they evidently preferred the strong and voluminous smoke out of the thick bamboo stem. It was amusing to see them, in their craving for any- thing saltish, eat the ash of the cigar, and even the heads of the lucifer matches as fast as they struck them. Copper pice and two-annas pieces they seemed indifferent to, and I am told that the rupee is the only coin of which the Looshais have yet learned the value—being thus literally born into civilization with a silver spoon in their mouths. The boys pleased us much by their courage and frankness, and two of them, who had open countenances and curled or frizzled hair, were quite girlish in appearance. Although they did not seem precocious or to know too much, one of them was unmistakably cleverer than the rest. He made desperate attempts to talk, and corrected our mispronunciation of Looshai words smartly. One ( Io ) of those whom I have called girlish laughed repeatedly with perfect artlessness and the sweetest expression. The smallest of the party had a loose tooth which he tugged at with his fingers several times till the pain made him desist. It was strange to observe how quick they were to hear a distant call in the midst of the most animated babbling. Once a boat was coming down the stream from Changsil, and the boatmen hailed from a long way off; and twice a faint cooey came from a Looshai on another hill. In each instance one of the boys stopped talking in a moment and gave a long cry, then hstened intently for the response. As soon as the boat was announced, all the boys rushed to certain dead logs and to burrows under the roots of trees, where they had stores of yams hidden, and unearthing these hurried with them down to the river. For we had ascended the bank a hundred yards or more, and were holding a palaver in a shady place. These eight Looshais belonged to Lenkoonga, about five miles from the river, a large village of between 400 and 500 houses, which was burned by the people themselves after Captain Browne’s murder, but has been built again since the restoration of good will. The new road between Changsil and the plains passes close to the village, and some of the Looshais are working on it. The “ jhooms,” or clearings for cultivation, belonging to the villagers are scattered along the hillsides to a distance of some miles from the village, and each has a bamboo hut in the centre for storing the grain. Our friends passively resisted our efforts to induce them to take us to their village, but I climbed to a jhoom that was near the river, and examined the store-house. It was clean and empty, and had a fetish of feathers at the entrance. There was also a pile of fruits and flowers, with what looked like blood, on the ground under the raised platform, which I took to be an offering. (it ® CHAPTER IIL—IHE RAID ON CHANGSIL. Fort Changsil is quite a difterent place from Fort William or Fort St. George. It is not much more formidable than Rome must have been when Remus jumped over the wall. But the Looshais look before they leap, which Remus, poor fellow, did not do; and so, although they tried for a whole month with everything in their favour, not a man of them got past the barrier. ‘This barrier consists simply of stout poles, eight or ten feet high, planted like palings, and the “ fort’ so made measures about seventy yards by thirty. At two opposite corners are little towers, whence five or six sepoys can enfilade a body of Looshais attempting to storm the stockade; while the stormers are further impeded by a bank of loose earth, up which they must run if they can, as «in unfortunate ant tries to run up the sides of an ant-lion’s pit into which it has fallen. The entrance—let us call it gateway—is guarded by a portcullis consisting of a bamboo frame covered on the outside with sharp bamboo spikes, sufficient to check a rush of Looshais for a few seconds till the sepoys within have time to project the muzzles of their rifles through the interstices. Such is the outside of Fort Changsil, which stands on the top of a steep hill 500 feet above the river, where you disembark from your boat. The elevation of the river itself at this point, after all the toilsome way from Jhalnacherra, is only 300 fcet, which gives a total height for Changsil of 800 feet above sea level, with a climate of course not very much better than that of the plains. When you return the sentry’s salute and enter the stockade, you find yourself ina museum of bamboo work. We are now in the heart of Looshailand, and the Looshais could give points to the Chinese in the uses to which they can put the bamboo. They make bamboo ropes for their cattle and bamboo thread for their needles, with twine and cord of all intermediate sizes, including bowstrings and, for anything I know, fiddle strings and banjo strings. They make buckets and boxes, hair-pins and earrings, tobacco-pipes and cooking-pots. The cooking-pots can only be used once, as they supply their own fuel; but then they are cheap and can be replaced with a slash of a dao on the néarést bamboo-tree. The Looshais are also well acquainted with the way of piercing the partitions 8, between the joints of a large bamboo and converting it into a water-jar, or “choonga.” ‘They carry water in nothing else, and such quantities of those curious pitchers do they have in their villages that our officers have sometimes made a requisition for 500 choongas of water, and they have been promptly supplied. These choongas are upwards of six feet long, so that filling them is tedious work, and pouring water out of them is a work of art; for a mistake of an inch in the inclination may empty all the water at once. Custom makes the hillmen wonderfully expert in using them: a man will trip gaily up or down a very steep hill with six choongas tied together on his back, and although the ends are only a few inches off the ground, and come within a hair’s-breadth of rocks and stumps of trees every moment or so, his practised eye judges the distance and avoids the obstacles. So then Fort Changsil, being in Looshailand, and built with Looshai help, is bamboo “ from turret to foundation-stone.” The stockade I have described contains quarters for officers, with out-houses and a guard-room. There is another, lower down, in which are the sepoys’ lines, a shop, and some other premises. Outside are storehouses for grain, and sheds for seventy mules which daily carry 120 maunds of flour, rice, etc., seven miles on the way to Aijal. All these houses are constructed through- out of bamboo, with the exception of a few beams in the larger ones to support them against storms; and they evoke admiration alike by their strength and by the neatness with which the work has been executed. ‘The officers’ bungalow is the best example of a house founded, finished, and furnished with bamboo. For flooring we have a strong mat made of split bamboos. The walls are matting of slightly finer make, and the roof is also matting laid on bamboo rafters. Everything is fastened with bamboo string, and the pegs and hooks on the walls are likewise bamboo. Of course, the doors are made of the same useful material, and bamboo trelliswork takes the place of window panes. Unlike glass panes, it keeps out the light, and lets in the air; but one must be prepared for some anomalies in a bamboo fort. Most people are familiar with bamboo chairs, but in Changsil the beds and tables are also made of bamboo. The tables are as level and steady as one could wish, and a clean, fresh bamboo bedstead, with a layer of dry bamboo leaves for a mattress, makes a couch fit for