| caption: |
Nowgong jurisdiction; Rengmah tribe specially placed under jurisdiction of Naga Hills; difficulty in setting boundary between Nowgong and Naga Hills |
| note: |
inaccurate spelling in the original text |
| text: |
10th January, Monday. Moved camp to Teetligooree close to (Koongjoong) having crossed the Jumoona at Bokoleeghat (a flourishing little village with several Dacca Traders in it). The road to-day lay almost entirely through jhooms either old or new and I think we must have come about 14 miles. |
| text: |
The Jumoonah at Bokoleeghat is a fine broad river with a sandy bed and during the rains considerable trade flows down it. |
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I find that the village of Teetligooree and the whole of this long narrow strip of land lying between the Hills on the right bank of the Jumoonah extending up to the Phatradeesah was settled by my predecessor in conjunction with the Deputy Commisioners of Nowgong to be in the Nowgong jurisdiction, where as the whole of the Hills inhabited by the Rengmah (a tribe specially placed under the control of the Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills) was in like manner declared to belong to the Naga Hills but as far as I can gather from the enquiries I have made it appears the Rengmah villages extend right away to the Borpoong and I have been unable to discover any river or stream bearing the name of the "Seesahjan" so that under the present circumstances it is quite impossible to say what the boundary between the Naga Hills and Nowgong really is and the only thing certain is that it cannot be the boundary as described in the Government Gazette dated the 16th December 1867. The fact is that with the exception of Mr. Masters who I believe in 1847 entered the Rengmah Hills from Golaghaut but found the country so impassable from the dense, wet jungles that he returned to the plains at Kazeerunga, no European Officer has ever traversed these Hills and the only maps extent give us but very little information regarding them and that little often wrong and apt to mislead one and indeed I find so little is known of these Rengmahs that although now at the very foot of their Hills I am unable to get any certain information either as to the number and size of their villages, their names, their position or even the direction of the road leading to them and it is only after considerable trouble that I have succeeded in obtaining the services of a man to act as guide and he appears to have but very vague ideas on the subject so I am afraid I am in for a rather unpleasant trip. |
