HKAMTI LONG (called Kantigyi by the Burmese, and Bor Hkampti by the peoples on the Assam side), a collection of seven Shan states subordinate to Burma. It lies between 27° and 28° N. and 97° and 98° E., and is bordered by the Mishmi country on the north, by the Patkai range on the west, by the Hukawng valley on the south and east, and indeed all round by various Chingpaw or Kachin communities. The country was visited by T. T.
Cooper, the Chinese traveller and political agent at Bhamo, where he was murdered ; by General Woodthorpe and Colonel Macgregor in 1884, by Mr. Errol Grey in the following year, and by Prince Henry of Orleans in 1895. For long the hill-girt plain lay outside British administered districts but the need for protecting the Shan community and of checking the irruption of the Kachins or Ching paw resulted in the setting up of a British district (Putao) with its administrative centre at Putao or Fort Hertz—over Ioo miles by mule track from railhead at Myitkyina. In the census of 1921 the district is given a nominal area of 200 square miles and a population of 7,673. The Putao district was later absorbed into the Myitkyina district of which it now forms part. From its northern situation, winters are colder than in most parts of Burma and the rainfall is heavy, evergreen dipterocarp forests surround ing the Hkamti plain itself. Hkamti was no doubt the northern most province of the Shan kingdom, founded at Mogaung by Sam Long-hpa, the brother of the ruler of Kambawsa, when that em pire had reached its greatest extension.