DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20140#0191
assam and the khassia hills.
167
The healthiness as well as the diseases1 vary considerably with the seasons; the
beginning of the rainy season, and occasionally the period following its end, are, as
everywhere in the tropics, the most unhealthy times of the year; fevers, often of a malignant
character, prevailing. In the cold season, chiefly about the end of January, catarrhs,
affections of the throat and the lungs, are prevalent, also leading to bronchitis.
Cutaneous ulcerations are also very numerous with the natives, especially at the begin-
ning of the hot season. Dysentery is not unfrequent; with the natives its cause is but
too often an indulgence in opium, in which also many of the women partake.2 For
Europeans fever is the disease to which they are most exposed.
In reference to cultivation the Assam climate may be quoted as especially
favourable for tea plantations. About 1830 Mr. Bruce first discovered the tea
plant in an apparently wild state, at all events perfectly unknown to the present
generation of inhabitants; in 1855 and 1856 I found tea plantations. existing already,
successful but very small. On the hill near Tezpur, figured in the Atlas, where my
tent was pitched, I still could point out tea plants in the jungly wilderness; and now all
these hills in sight are covered with plantations; in 1862 the commissioner kindly wrote
to me from Grohatti, that the ground cultivated with tea amounted to 654 acres, the
quantity of tea obtained to 193,900 pounds, of the value of 72,800 rupees, corresponding
to a return of nearly 25 per cent.—Also all over the southern parts of the Himalaya
a most successful cultivation of tea has been rapidly effected; there climate is more
favorable still; for, in Assam, though the monthly means, as we have seen above,
remain cooler than might be expected for this latitude, when compared with regions
farther to the west, the absolute extremes remain tropical enough in summer.
Earthquakes are frequent in Assam, chiefly in November, December, and
January, when I, too, had occasion to observe several shocks along the right bank
of the Brahmaputra. Also in the meteorological registers I found them regularly
1 Details about the diseases are to be found in: Leslie's "Account of the Diseases of Gowhatti;" McLeob's
"Topography of Bislmath;" and McCosh's "Topography of Asam;" as well as in Robinson, "Descriptive Account
of Asam."
2 Before the introduction of the government opium from Bengal, opium was very generally cultivated by the
natives; they used to collect it by wiping the heads of the poppy, some days after incisions had been made, with rags,
which when the draught was to be prepared were stewed in a little hot water. Major Vetch was kind enough to
add to my collections some specimens of these rags he had kept.
167
The healthiness as well as the diseases1 vary considerably with the seasons; the
beginning of the rainy season, and occasionally the period following its end, are, as
everywhere in the tropics, the most unhealthy times of the year; fevers, often of a malignant
character, prevailing. In the cold season, chiefly about the end of January, catarrhs,
affections of the throat and the lungs, are prevalent, also leading to bronchitis.
Cutaneous ulcerations are also very numerous with the natives, especially at the begin-
ning of the hot season. Dysentery is not unfrequent; with the natives its cause is but
too often an indulgence in opium, in which also many of the women partake.2 For
Europeans fever is the disease to which they are most exposed.
In reference to cultivation the Assam climate may be quoted as especially
favourable for tea plantations. About 1830 Mr. Bruce first discovered the tea
plant in an apparently wild state, at all events perfectly unknown to the present
generation of inhabitants; in 1855 and 1856 I found tea plantations. existing already,
successful but very small. On the hill near Tezpur, figured in the Atlas, where my
tent was pitched, I still could point out tea plants in the jungly wilderness; and now all
these hills in sight are covered with plantations; in 1862 the commissioner kindly wrote
to me from Grohatti, that the ground cultivated with tea amounted to 654 acres, the
quantity of tea obtained to 193,900 pounds, of the value of 72,800 rupees, corresponding
to a return of nearly 25 per cent.—Also all over the southern parts of the Himalaya
a most successful cultivation of tea has been rapidly effected; there climate is more
favorable still; for, in Assam, though the monthly means, as we have seen above,
remain cooler than might be expected for this latitude, when compared with regions
farther to the west, the absolute extremes remain tropical enough in summer.
Earthquakes are frequent in Assam, chiefly in November, December, and
January, when I, too, had occasion to observe several shocks along the right bank
of the Brahmaputra. Also in the meteorological registers I found them regularly
1 Details about the diseases are to be found in: Leslie's "Account of the Diseases of Gowhatti;" McLeob's
"Topography of Bislmath;" and McCosh's "Topography of Asam;" as well as in Robinson, "Descriptive Account
of Asam."
2 Before the introduction of the government opium from Bengal, opium was very generally cultivated by the
natives; they used to collect it by wiping the heads of the poppy, some days after incisions had been made, with rags,
which when the draught was to be prepared were stewed in a little hot water. Major Vetch was kind enough to
add to my collections some specimens of these rags he had kept.