This is a most valuable book, full of useful information as regards all the Hill tribes of Manipur. I have made use of it freely in Part II., but space did not allow of my extracting all that I should have liked to reproduce. It would be well worth while to reprint this book, with notes bringing it up to date.

Another most valuable book, as regard Thados and Old Kukis, which would well repay reprinting. Both these books contain comparative vocabularies.

One of these tales is reproduced in Part II. The tales are well translated, but the Lushai is transliterated in a manner now out of date. The notes are as excellent as one would expect from a writer who certainly knew more of the Lushai than anyone else at that time, and who was more admired by them than any other white man has ever been.

A most fascinating book, full of information, expressed in good English. Pages 98 to 118 deal with Lushais and Shendus, i.e. Lakhers.

The portion concerning the Author’s life among the Lushais is full of interest, and his word pictures of the scenery and life among the people, for “Thangliana” as he was called really did live among the people, sharing their food even, are accurate and graphic. To few Europeans is the power given to mix thus with such savages and yet retain their respect. I once heard a Lushai’s comment on a young officer who with the best of intentions tried to imitate the great “Thangliana.” A friend asked him what he thought of So-and-So, the reply being: “I don’t know what sort of man he is, all I know is, that he cannot be a sahib to live as he does.”

A model of what such a book should be. The illustrations are particularly good. The Lushais and Thados are only touched. Much of the matter referring to the Haka and Klang-Klang Chins is applicable to the Lakhers.

A very complete and accurate work. Unfortunately the standard system of transliteration has not been entirely adhered to.

I believe this is a useful accurate work, but have not been able to obtain it.

As regards Lushais there is not much of value, as they are beyond the scope of the work, but few being found in the Hill Tracts.

[Note.—On p. 6 of the present work the Author refers to a passage in Lewin’s Hill Tracts of Chittagong and the Dwellers therein, in which is cited an account of “the Cucis or inhabitants of the Tipperah Mountains written by J. Rennel, Chief Engineer of Bengal in 1800.” In reading through the proofs of the present work, it occurred to me that it would be important to discover whether the “J. Rennel” referred to by Lewin was or was not the famous Major James Rennell, Surveyer-General of Bengal, who is so often described as “the Father of Modern Geography.” Major Rennell with his wife (nÉe Jane Thackeray—a great aunt of the novelist W. M. Thackeray) left Bengal in March, 1777, and reached England in February 1778. He died on March 29, 1830. It seemed to me possible that the great Rennell might have obtained the information about the Kukis during his period of service in East Bengal, and that he might have published a memoir on the subject in 1800. Mr. W. Foster of the Record Department of the India Office very kindly informed me that no such a memoir could be traced at Whitehall, and drew my attention to Lewin’s heading of the memoir, “From the French of M. Bouchesiche, who translated the original from the English of J. Rennel, Chief Engineer of Bengal.... Published at Leipsic in 1800.” Mr. Edward Heawood, Librarian of the Royal Geographical Society, to whom I am indebted for much trouble taken in satisfying my curiosity, informed me that Bouchesiche gave what purported to be an extract, translated into French, from Rennell’s well-known work on India, and that the Frenchman’s book was printed in Paris in 1800, although there may perhaps have been a Leipzig issue also. The account of the Kukis given in Bouchesiche’s work, however, is not taken from any known work by James Rennell. Dalton in his Ethnology of Bengal refers to what has been supposed to be the earliest account of the Kukis—a memoir by Surgeon McCrea, which appeared in 1799 in Volume vii of Asiatic Researches. Mr. Heawood most kindly hunted up McCrea’s memoir, and found in it a reference to a memoir which appeared in Volume ii of Asiatic Researches, 1790. The title of the memoir of 1790 runs “On the Manners, Religion, and Laws of the Cucis, or Mountaineers of Tipra.... Communicated in Persian by John Rawlins, Esq.” On investigation, Mr. Heawood found that the Memoir of 1790 is undoubtedly the original from which Bouchesiche drew his account in French, and of this the account, attributed to “J. Rennel” by Colonel Lewin, is a rough paraphrase. Note by the Rev. Walter K. Firminger.]