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apologies for Tangkkul helmet having arrived broken at Pitt Rivers Museum; Lambert, S.D.O. at Mokokchung; Hutton taking leave; Andamese photos |
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Please excuse pencil. I write from the bed of sickness and am to be "pruned" I think you call it - "collar pruned" in this case perhaps, of my appendix tomorrow. Your letter came yesterday, probably crossing one of mine. I am awfully sorry the Tangkhul helmet and gorget arrived all broken. It should have been easy enough to pack - sorry I was too busy to see to it myself. I have just thought what a fool I was not to fill the pot with wax - cheap enough in Kohima and should have been mixed with shavings and sawdust anyway. |
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As for disc ornaments, Lambert the S.D.O. of Mokokchung and a distant connection who has been keeping the job in the family for a bit, is off on a survey trip for the whole cold weather in the Assam - Burma Konyak country, knows what you want and roughly where to get it and will do so. Anything else that you want from there tell him about and he will see to it. He has promised to take and show you his collections provided all duplicates go to Dublin. You can keep anything required to complete the P.R. series. E.T.D. Lambert, Mokokchung will find him till Oct. 1st anyway. He is planned to emerge on the Chindwin and to return via Manipur in March when he goes on leave and will visit Oxford. He will also bring the model dancing board which proved too heavy for the post when packed. |
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As for me I have discarded my short office as Chief Secretary, as one can't carry on from a bed and am now on leave. When that ends - presumably with September - I go to Nowgong in the Assam Valley as D.C. I may get a glimpse of the Mikirs and the shooting is said to be good, but it does not please me to be D.C. in the plains, and therefore I take leave (a year before I had meant to) in March. I have applied for 9 months, but the Reforms will be materializing at the end of it, and unless I am offered something more congenial (or more lucrative) than a plains district in Assam, I shall not go back, but it will be inconvenient, as school bills come very heavy, and my insurances will not all have matured. The Naga Hills is a washout (except as the merest stop gap) as the present Governor (now on leave) considers I have been there quite long enough. Bor and Lambert are doing very well there, but both go, and Mills returns. |
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The last Census of India volume (I, part IV) is just out. I should much like to know that you think of part A by Guha SEE. The rest is mostly collections from different reports, but the parts in larger type have not been printed before. |
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I have just had an offer, from Francis Edwards, of Portman's Photographs in 26 volumes of the Andamanese. They can never be taken again and Portman saw more of them than anyone and his photographs are good although old - 1890 - 700 photographs with printed and ms. descriptions. Very soon they will be all we shall know of them. I can't afford the fifty pounds they ask. Can you persuade the society to buy (or the Museum, or the B.M.) before some Yank pinches them. Henry Field jr. will jump at it if he hears. |
