| caption: |
Chapter Twelve. Towards Unknown Country |
| caption: |
Mokokchung busy, swarms of people |
| text: |
I caught sight of G.W.J. Smith, a young police officer, in the middle of this confusion. He was then Subdivisional Officer at Mokokchung, and had the not very enviable task of hiring the porters, dividing them into groups, and seeing that the loads were equally distributed. We had to carry considerable provisions with us, for even in friendly Naga villages there would hardly be enough to feed the whole column, and to live on the land in hostile (109) country would be impossible. A porter who has to carry his own food for even a fortnight cannot carry more than half a load in addition, and although rice-dumps had been established in friendly villages beyond the border, we needed every one of our 360 porters to carry kit and provisions for the four of us, for our escort of 150 Assam Rifles, and for the staff of dobashi. |
