PREFACE
TO THE STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF ASSAM.
These volumes deal with the Province of Assam as constituted in 1874. The tract then withdrawn from the Lieutenant-Governorship of Bengal, and formed into a separate Chief-Commissionership, consists of two river valleys with a lofty hill tract between. On the north, the Brahmaputra Valley covers an area of 20,683 square miles, or one-half the whole Province, and gives the name of its former dominant race, the Ahams, to Assam. From its southern edge rises the hill country, a wild broken region of 14,447 square miles, inhabited by non-Aryan tribes. To the south of these intervening mountains, again, lies the smaller valley of the Bárak and Surmá, extending over 6668 square miles. The whole is divided for administrative purposes into eleven Districts, with an aggregate population of 4,132,019 persons, and an area of 41,798 square miles, yielding an average of 99 inhabitants to the square mile.[1]
The preparation of the Statistical Account of Assam was
- ↑ The above figures are based on the Census of 1871-72, and reckon the Eastern Dwárs as part of Goálpára District. The latest Parliamentary Return (1878) leaves the population and average per square mile untouched, but takes the total area at 55,384 square miles, owing to the fact that it includes an estimate for the unsurveyed tracts in the Cachar, Nágá, and Lakhimpur Hills.
