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Manipuris refuse to set up boundary makers as the Rajah would not recognise them; attempts to set boundary between Kidimah and Sopoomah |
| note: |
inaccurate spelling in the original text |
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9th January. Both Colonel Thomson and I tried very hard to induce Major Roma Sing and the Manipuries to come out this morning and assist us in demarcating the boundary across the neck of land between the Sijjo and the Zullo dividing the villages forming the Sopoomah group on the one side from Kidimah on the other, but in vain. The poor "Major" who really seems a very good fellow in his way although a terrible humbug and apparently almost entirely in the hands of his Subadars, one "Laitumba" especially, said that he was ready to do anything he could for us but that he begged we would not ask him to put up any pillars or otherwise mark out the boundary as he had the Rajah's orders not to recognize any boundary which did not include Kohimah until he had received Her Majesty's Commands upon the memorial which he had already submitted to [26] the Government on the subject, and so we went out alone, accompanied only by our own respective escorts and the Chiefs of Kidimah and Sopoomah. My first idea was that we should be able to make the boundary between Assam and Manipur coincide with and run along the existing boundary between the villages of Kidimah and Sopoomah so that the boundary between the two villages would also form the boundary between the two Governments, but in this we were disappointed for on enquiry, we found that the fields not only of Kidimah but of Viswemah and Khuzamah jutted out into uncultivated lands claimed by Sopoomah and vice versa. Besides which we discovered that all these villages were in the habit of buying and selling landed property among themselves so that any such boundary as there I had originally wished to adopt if laid down this year would in all probability have to be changed the next, and so on ad infinitum. And we therefore determined to adopt the present boundary between the several villages only so far as it might happen to fall in with the natural features of the country. |
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The local enquiry into this question took up the better portion of the day and we returned to camp late in the evening tired out with our day's work. |
