We were going to a place over two hundred miles away called Jorehat, in the Assam Valley, near the Brahmapootra, and to get to it we had to pass through Kohima, in the Naga Hills, ninety-six miles from Manipur. It was my first visit there, and I enjoyed the eight days’ journey to it immensely. We were accompanied as far as Mao Thana (the boundary between the Manipur state and Kohima) by the eldest son of the Tongal General. Before going on, I think some description of the latter officer will not be amiss, especially as he has played so important a part in the late rebellion. He was an old man, nearer eighty than seventy I should think, taller than the average Manipuri, and marvellously active for his age. He had a fine old face, much lined and wrinkled with age and the cares of state which had fallen upon him when he was quite a young man, and had in no wise lessened as his years increased. He had piercing black eyes, shaggy overhanging white eyebrows, and white hair. His nose was long and slightly hooked, and his mouth was finely cut and very determined. He was fond of bright colours, and I never remember seeing him in anything but a delicate pink silk dhotee, a dark coat made from a first-rate English pattern, and a pink turban, and when the orchids were in bloom, he seldom appeared without a large spray of some gorgeous-hued specimen in the top of his turban. The Tongal always reminded me of an eagle. He had the same keen, rugged expression and deep-set, glowing eyes. Few things happened without his knowledge and consent, and if he withheld his approbation from any matter, there would invariably be a hitch in it somewhere. He was credited with more bloodshed than any man in the kingdom. If a village had misbehaved itself, raided on another, or refused to pay revenue or do Lalup, the Tongal would travel out to that village and wipe it off the face of the earth. Men, women, and children were cut down without the slightest compunction. Few escaped, and these travelled away and joined other villages; but every house and barn and shed was burnt, pigs and fowls destroyed, and ruin and devastation reigned where prosperity and plenty had held sway before. I believe in later years restrictions were brought to bear upon the Manipur durbar which prevented such wholesale slaughter; but in earlier days the Tongal had, as he expressed it, ‘nautched through many villages’ in the style described, and brought desolation into many a hillman’s peaceful home.