reside over large areas of country with very little
interference. All the British portion of the hills is what is called a
"Scheduled District" under Acts XIV and XV of 1874, and legislation
which may be inappropriate to the conditions of the people can be,
and is, excluded from operation within it. In these circumstances the
administration is carried on in a manner well calculated to win the
confidence and attachment of the people, who have to hear few of the
burdens which press upon the population elsewhere, and, with the peace
and protection guaranteed by British rule, are able to develop their
institutions upon indigenous lines. It is now more than forty years
since any military operations have been necessary within the hills,
and the advance of the district in prosperity and civilization during
the last half-century has been very striking.

The first contact between the British and the inhabitants of the
Khasi Hills followed upon the acquisition by the East India Company,
in consequence of the grant of the _Diwani_ of Bengal in 1765, of the
district of Sylhet. The Khasis were our neighbours on the north of
that district, and to the north-east was the State of Jaintia, [1]
ruled over by a chief of Khasi lineage, whose capital, Jaintiapur, was
situated in the plain between the Surma river and the hills. Along this
frontier, the Khasis, though not averse from trade, and in possession
of the quarries which furnished the chief supply of lime to deltaic
Bengal, were also known as troublesome marauders, whose raids were
a terror to the inhabitants of the plains. Captain R.B. Pemberton,
in his Report on the Eastern Frontier (1835), mentions [2] an attack
on Jaintia by a force under Major Henniker in 1774, supposed to have
been made in retaliation for aggression by the Raja in Sylhet; and
Robert Lindsay, who was Resident and Collector of Sylhet about 1778,
has an interesting account of the hill tribes and the Raja of Jaintia
in the lively narrative embodied in the "Lives of the Lindsays." [3]
Lindsay, who made a large fortune by working the lime quarries and thus
converting into cash the millions of cowries in which the land-revenue
of Sylhet was paid, appears to have imagined that the Khasis, whom
he calls "a tribe of independent Tartars," were in direct relations
with China, and imported thence the silk cloths [4] which they brought
down for sale in the Sylhet markets. A line of forts was established
along the foot of t