between the flames. The land selected for cotton, over which fire has passed, is then roughly cleared of charred embers and roots, and ploughed over once. Holes are made at intervals of two or three feet with a hoe, in which the cotton seeds are sown with some regularity. Occasionally wild indigo seed is also thrown broadcast over the cotton fields, and the two plants come to maturity together. Until recent years, the hoe or spud was the only instrument of husbandry used by the Meches; and although they are beginning now to utilise the plough, the spud and not the plough is still the unit of taxation. From time immemorial the Meches have paid and they still pay a capitation tax of two rupees for each male who can use the spud without regard to the quantity of land which they annually bring into cultivation.

The land is sown the next year with 'bitre,' or the autumnal rice crop, and the third year with a species of millet. It is then abandoned for at least seven years, and speedily reverts to jungle, and the Meches say that the vegetable growth on such land is denser and more luxuriant than even the virgin forest. Thus, during its seven years of abandonment the decaying leaves and branches in successive years and the dead embers of each year's fires restore richness to the soil, and enable it again to yield cotton, the most exhausting of all the frontier crops. Its abandonment for so long a period is considered by the Meches necessary for the success of the crop. The land at the foot of the hills is, as has been already explained, subject to very peculiar conditions of water supply, and the cotton appears to grow only in that belt of land which is subject to the periodic appearance and reappearance of water in the river channels, which I have described. Incredible as it may seem, Meches are apparently

able to find out and identify land on which cotton has at one time grown without any other guide than the appearance of the jungle growth. From the cotton thus obtained and separated from the pod with their own simple instruments, fabrics of remarkable beauty and durability are woven by their women. They have three dyes, two of which, wild indigo and madder, are well known; the third, a yellow dye, called by them 'tempa,' is a product which I have not been able at present to identify. The worm of the castor oil plant (Ricinus communis) supplies them with another fabric of a silky texture.

The food grains of all the frontier tribes are practically identical, and appear to be the only forms of grain which will grow on the borderland of the lower hills. They consist of 'marwa' and 'káwan; the former is similar to the millet of Upper India, and the latter something like mustard, but of a smaller grain. The national beverage of the Meches is prepared from marwa, and the ability to manufacture this drink appears to be incommunicable. To the Mech alone it presents no difficulty; to all other tribes the use of the grain for potable purposes appears impossible. It is by no means unpalatable.

The account I have given of the cotton tillage will readily explain the migratory habits of the race. This migration occurs every three years, and the site of what was formerly a thriving village soon becomes dense jungle. A homestead once abandoned is never revisited. The tree potato, the hardiest of vegetable growths, is occasionally seen clinging to the stems of the thorn bushes that have covered the Mech gardens, and the sacred cactus may still be found struggling with the long grass; but no hut is ever built upon the spot again.

The Meches, as a body, are strongly imbued with religious

feelings. All the natural products are protected by deities, and all these require propitiation at the time of sowing and reaping. One of their principal festivals occurs at the reaping of the cotton crop, the 'harvest home' of this race. The rivers are all powerful gods, and a failure of water or an inundation are the penalties which overtake neglect of their worship. Along side of each homestead is a small inclosure carefully cleared of weeds in which is a hut containing a rude earthen figure of Mahákál, the deity which I have described as the link between the Sivaism of the Hindus and the deification of natural objects which is the indigenous religion of the Koches. Around this hut and within the fenced inclosure grows the wild cactus, called by them shizu' (Euphorbium), and cherished with the utmost care, as upon the wellbeing of these plants is supposed to depend the life and prosperity of the household. The deity of which shizu' is the emblem, is called Bháto. He has no equivalent in the Hindu pantheon, and I have been unable precisely to ascertain his stand-point in relation to the community. He is certainly not dreaded by them with the unreasoning terror with which tribes of less culture and less thorough sunniness of disposition are in the habit of regarding their principal deity. He appears to be looked upon rather as their protector and preserver, but the punishment which follows infraction of any of the laws which he has imposed is quick and terrible. He is unrepresented by any graven or wooden image; the cactus alone is the living emblem of his continual presence; the death of one of these plants is the occasion of distress and mourning, and it must be immediately replaced with appropriate prayers and offerings. But the death of a cactus, whether it be replaced or not, is an omen of dread significance,

and is usually followed, according to Mech superstition, by the death of one of the household within the year. Bháto is omnipotent to protect from outbreaks of disease, especially from cholera or small-pox, which are terrible scourges of the nomad population of the frontier; but his most significant attribute, and one which indicates the most prominent moral feature of the Meches, is his peculiar position. towards the tribe as the guardian of chastity. To describe the Meches simply as a chaste people would be far short of the truth. Every observer has noticed and alluded to this trait in their character. But very few races, however great their reputation for chastity, have a genuine belief in the immediate punishment of a breach of purity by the supreme Deity. This belief is so strong among them that it has even survived, with little diminution of intensity, the admixture with Aryan forms of thought which has tinctured their religion with Sivaism. To this day there is not a Mech cluster of houses in the jungles of the northeastern frontier where this dread is not a powerful agent in preserving morality among both married and unmarried. Its effectiveness is further strengthened by the sanction of the civil law. The belief is that a breach of chastity is punished by Bháto with violent disease, the cause of which is quickly recognised by the priestly head of the community. The culprit can only regain health and social status by a heavy fine, part of which goes to the injured husband, and the remainder is equally divided, a moiety being paid to the headman and the other applied to feasting the outraged community. The amount of this fine varies according to the means of the offender; but the usual one, twenty rupees, is fully equal to one-half the yearly income of an ordinary Mech cultivator. Instances of the imposition of the fine are, however, very

an

Traces of Hinduism are plainly perceptible even among the cottongrowing Meches of the frontier. Their principal deities, Bháto and Mainon, are, it is true, propitiated by sacrifices of fowls and pigs, a monstrous violation of decorum in Hindu eyes, but in the case of deities adopted from an Aryan source I have noticed a tendency to imitate the restrictions (of the Hindu ritual. The change in public opinion as regards the animals used for diet is still more striking. In the quotation from Buchanan given above, the Koches are described as considering those 'most restrained as most exalted, allowing the Gárós to be their superiors, because the Gárós may eat beef.' The Meches of the present day look upon the killing of a cow with the horror of a Hindu, and would reject with disdain any suggestion of the superiority of beef-eating races. Not only is this proposition true of the Meches, but conversely of the Gárós and the Totos, who eat beef. Their omnivorousness of diet is admittedly a disgrace in their own eyes, and they confess that they can eat rice cooked by a Mech, but that a Mech will not touch their food because he belongs to a superior tribe.

This acceptance or non-acceptance of food as an indication of relative rank is undoubtedly derived from an Aryan source. It is one of the salient features in the Brahmanical system, and is in short the foundation of caste. Among the Bhutias, who are a distinct Thibetan hill race and have no Aryan tendencies, there is not a trace of any disposition to entertain questions of purity and impurity with regard to the eating of food.

In the time of Bhutia supremacy in the Western Dwárs (i.e. before 1865) the Meches enjoyed a political importance which they have since lost.

They are in form, features, and language somewhat akin to the Bhutias, and the latter entrusted to them, in preference to any other of the inhabitants of the plains, the right of farming the tribute annually collected from among the scanty cultivators of the Dwárs. Hence they enjoyed in person and property a complete immunity from the outrages on the Rájbansí population which culminated in Mr. Eden's mission to Bhutan in 1864 and ultimately in the Bhutan War. Their cattle were never stolen, they were never harassed by the labour tax, their youths and maidens were never kidnapped to the hills. They were in fact the only race on the Bhutan marches who lived in some cohesion and whose headmen were sufficiently wealthy to undertake the collection of revenue. Those palmy days are now over, the Bhutia supremacy in the plains of Jalpaiguri is a thing of the past, and the Bhutia population is disappearing from the lower hills. Occasionally a Bhutia family grievously overweighted with taxation takes refuge in the plains, and the kindly Mech, who will not leave his jungles, but does not resent intrusion into them, teaches him his simple rules for tilling cotton and growing millet, and gives him a helping hand in the hot and steaming forest, so

deadly to the Bhutia of the hills. The Mech governors of the different divisions of the Dwárs are still alive, sadly fallen from their high estate, but preserving their independence and dignity among their people to the last.

I now come to a subject which has at any rate the advantage of complete novelty. I refer to the facts which I have to present with regard to a race alluded to on a former page-the Totos, a people whose peculiarities, surrounding circumstances, and diminishing numbers form one of the most interesting ethnological problems of the north-eastern frontier. It is strange that this race, who have for generations existed in their present home, have hitherto entirely evaded inquiry. I have in vain searched the notices of Dr. Buchanan, the journals of the Asiatic Society, the pages of Mr. Hodgson's works, and Colonel Dalton's Ethnology for any reference to this people, and can only conclude that nothing has yet been published with regard to their customs and their language. I shall therefore describe them with somewhat more minuteness than was necessary in the case of the Koches and Bodos, as to whose history and characteristics so much light had been thrown by earlier writers that it was unnecessary for me to do more than sketch their present social standpoint.

At a point in the Bhutia hills about latitude 26° 50', longitude 89° 25', the Torshá, one of the most rapid of the rivers which I have described as intersecting the Jalpaiguri district from north to south, forces its precipitous way into the plains. The western boundary consists of a magnificent chain of hills, rising abruptly from bed to heights varying from

1,000 to 2,500 feet. The sides of these hills are clothed with gigantic forest trees, and are pathless, and untrodden except by the wild elephant. The scream of the toucan as he wings his way far overhead is sometimes heard amid the silent solitude of these hills, along whose upper slopes the roar of the Torshá as it descends in cataracts diminishes to a gentle murmur. The hills form at their base a series of pillared walls in which the water has hollowed out numerous stalactite caves. The hill side is of disAt the apex

integrated limestone. of one of the highest of the peaks which form the line of frontier at this point, is a massive rock which stands out like a bastion in a castle wall. It is called the rock of Taleshur, and was at one time the common shrine at which Bhutia, Mech, and Toto worshipped. All hill people, or races who had their origin amid the hills, however far they may have strayed from their home, retain a strong tendency to worship the tops of mountains. Throughout Bhutan the summits of hills are decorated with white banners and heaps of stones, and at all these spots offerings are made to Mahákál. The rock of Taleshur is one of the most celebrated of such spots. Its isolated and lofty position, inaccessibility and sentinel-like majesty of appearance, have for generations back impressed the superstitions and imaginative people of the frontier with the deepest awe. The spot has become surrounded with strange traditions, and its presiding deity invested with the most gloomy and powerful attributes. A temple not made with hands' and a tank of sacred water are believed to exist within the massive rock, and death is predicted for all who attempt to reach its rugged portals.3

The worship of Taleshur has apparently lasted for centuries, and is in all probability a relic of times even anterior to the immigration of the sub-Himalayan races. In earlier days I find that the Bhutia lámás alone were believed by the group of races who acknowledged the supremacy of Taleshur, to possess the power of offering sacrifice to the deity, and there is a curious tradition that the only route to the temple enshrined in the rock was through one of the limestone caves at the side of the hill, abutting on the Torsha. The story goes that the Bhutia priests were absent three days and nights after entering this cave, and that on their return, after the sacrifice was completed, they received the homage of those who believed they had seen the god 'face to face' and lived. The Bhutias have of late years deserted the lower hills, but the map which accompanies Turner's Embassy to Thibet indicates many Bhutia villages and temples upon the hills skirting the Torsha which have long since disappeared. In present days there is no worship at the shrine of Taleshur itself, but the cave is still regarded with superstitious dread and is seldom approached by the people of the plains. With some difficulty I prevailed upon one or two Mech villagers to accompany me to this cave, and by the aid of a lantern I explored its recesses. It required some resolution to penetrate its secrets, as ingress was only possible by lying at full length on the ground and forcing my way with great difficulty between huge blocks of detached limestone, which appeared in some places as though a touch would loosen them and bring them down upon me as I lay beneath. It was likely enough, too, that poisonous snakes were harboured

in the gloomy cavities, into which I am convinced that for many years no human being had penetrated. Fifty yards from the entrance the winding passage broadened and gave admission into a spacious, dome-shaped recess, the roof and walls of which were covered with innumerable bats. In a corner I detected the charred remains of bones, and a few Bhutia coins blackened by smoke. This, then, was probably the spot in which the Bhutia lámás remained for three days, and pretended to sacrifice to Taleshur. The modes in which the superstitious are duped by priestly imposture are singularly parallel among all peoples and in all ages.

Beneath the shadow of this rock, and, they believe, under the peculiar and gloomy guardianship of the deity who inhabits the rock, the Totos are to be found in a village called Sántrabari or 'orange grove.' They are but the remnants of what was, according to their traditions, at one time an influential and powerful race. Some twenty families are all that now exist, and in two or three generations, as they can only marry within these scanty limits, it may be confidently anticipated that the race will have disappeared. How long they have dwelt in the village to which they now cling it is impossible to say; but it is certain they will never leave it. They are, as befits a dying race, gloomy and fatalistic, and scarcely ever laugh. The only time I ever saw a Toto surprised into merriment was when I repeated to him a few words of his own language, which I had learned from one of his fellow-villagers. In this case the laugh was something like the spasmodic grin from a galvanic shock. The Toto language is very uncouth and difficult to pronounce, and