| caption: |
to summit of Shiroi Kishung |
| note: |
inaccurate spelling in the original text |
| text: |
30th March. Halted today in order to visit the summit of Shiroi Kishung or Shiroi Farar (as the Manipuries call it) a high mountain about 8,000 feet above the sea level and almost due east of the village of Shiroi we descended last night. That this must be the furthest point to which we can hope to get this season nerves [sic] our whole party including the Thongal Major, Gokul and my Inspector Mema Ram ascended the mountain in order to see all that was to be seen from its summit. The view was as may be supposed very fine indeed and enabled us to see the run of the several ranges very clearly. It was very fortunate indeed we have come up as far as this for it has enabled Austin to correct an error which he had made in this portion of the watershed. Thongal Major informed us that the river rising [7] below and to the north of Shiroi Farar mountain joins the Lanier (information which he had evidently gleaned from the Nagas) but that afterwards the main River takes a bend off to the east and thus eventually flows into the Ningthi and to support this latter portion of the statement he related a cock and bull story about a drowned Naga corpse floating down the river and afterwards being recovered from the singphus by the party of Nagas who went off to search for it, a story which I managed to turn against him delightfully by saying "oh yes, exactly, I have no doubt those must have been our Singhphus near Debrughur and so you see that clearly proves that the Lanier must flow into the Brohmahputra and not into the Ningphi", to which he gravely replied that he thought those must be different Singphus. However regarding the matter of the Lanier and its future course it happens very fortunately that Pemberton has recorded that the "Kuchai flows north into Assam" and that information must evidently have been given to him by the Manipuri themselves besides which it corroborates what the Nagas told me at Gaziphemah, and as we have succeeded in most clearly identifying the "Kuchai" to be the feeder of the "Lanier", which rises below and to the north of the Kuchai Khulel village, I have no hesitation in saying that the evidence as far as it goes is entirely in favour of our believing that the Lanier is an Assam River and not a Burmah one as the Manipuries would now have us to believe. Of course it may take an easterly course and eventually fall into the Ningthi but I think it to be most unlikely, in fact to do so I should say from the run of the hills as I saw them this morning that the river in that case must run right through the Sarameti range. However this is a matter we can easily clear up next cold season and in the mean we have effectually cut off the Manipuries from making any further advance just at present. |
