History of Upper Assam, Upper Burmah and north ... - Khamkoo

148 HISTORY OF UPPER ASSAM chap.
making a mule road up the Lohit valley to Walong,
a place on the, at present, undefined frontier a little
south-west of Rima, as well as exploring the valleys
of the Dibang and Dri rivers further north in the
Mishmi hills. And we now know from their reports,
on completion of operations in these hills in late
May, 191 3, that the basin of the Dibang river has been
completely surveyed and found to be shut in by a
lofty mountain range which none of the rivers of
Thibet break through. The making of bridle paths
up the Lohit and Dibang valleys proved most laborious
work, but was successfully carried out for many
marches in each case.
The Hkamtis
With these people and their neighbours, the
Singphos, we reach the connecting link between the
Assam and Burma border peoples. They are of the
same race as the Ahoms with this difference, that
they are Buddhists, and only arrived in the Sadiya
district in the end of the eighteenth century, where,
first settling on the Tengapani river, they crossed
the Brahmaputra, ousted the Assamese governor of
Sadiya and took that corner of Assam, where the
British in 1825 left them alone on consideration of
their agreeing to keep up a small force for the pre-
servation 9f_order. In 1825 they assisted us against
the Singphos, and in 1835, on the death of the old
Hkamti chief, his son, openly disobeying our orders,
was deported, and a British Political Agent was sent
to Sadiya to administer the country.
Four years later, as we have previously seen, the