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Unfit coolies at Mariani; information concerning tea gardens and rifle battalion |
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Left Mariani at 3.0 am and reached Nazira at 5.0 am. No coolies. A Havildar and 9 sepoys reported to me on the platform. The coolies turned up at 10.0 just as I was starting to load carts. One sepoy had such a bad foot that I had to send him back to Dimapur. He couldn't have marched. None of the 10 looked up to much, but the other 9 managed to get to Bamon Pukri - not more than six miles and probably little if anything over five - though one got trouble on the way from an old wound and was completely done up on his arrival. |
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In the evening I motored in to Nazira club with Mr. Ledger and saw a number of people. Mr. Maxwell, the General Manager of the Assam Company, told me that the 50 rifles of the Naga Hills Battalion still at Nazira were not needed in the least, and in his opinion never had been. Anyway they were not wanted now. In this case I cannot see why they should not be sent back to Kohima. All this breaking up of the Battalion is very bad for general training and discipline, and in this particular case is obviously quite unnecessary. No one is likely to know more about the situation with regard to labour on the Tea Gardens than Mr. Maxwell and if he considers it unnecessary to keep the men at Nazira they should be sent back to Head Quarters at once, particularly as the hot weather is coming on and they will probably have a much larger percentage of sick if they stay down in the plains without proper lines or their own hospital etc. than they would in Kohima. |
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I picked up a good deal of information in Nazira about Mr. Taylor, Manager of Hoolingoorie Tea Estate who is said to have been allowing trans-frontier Nagas working on his garden to be badly done down. What I was told was little to Mr. Taylor's credit. |
