ASSAM, a chief-commissionership of British India, on the northeastern border of Bengal, bounded on the north by the eastern section of the great Himalayan range; on the northeast by the Mishmi Hills, which sweep round the head of the Brahmaputra Valley; on the east by the mountains inhabited by Kham tis, Singphos and various Naga tribes, and by the Burmese frontier where it runs with that of the state of Manipur; on the south by the Chin Hills, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and the state of Hill Tippera; and on the west by the Bengal districts of Tippera, Mymensingh and Rangpur, the state of Cooch Behar, and Jal paiguri District. The area of Assam proper is 54,015 square miles, and with the native state of Manipur (8,456 square miles), a total of 61, 471 square miles. The territory may be con sidered as a long series of fertile Valleys watered by the Brahmaputra and its tributaries. The valley of the Brahmaputra consists of rich alluvial plains, about 450 miles in length, with an average breadth of about 50 miles, either but little elevated above the flood-level of the river and its feeders, or so low that large ex tents of them are flooded for three or four days once or twice in the year. The Surma Valley is a flat plain about 125 miles long by 60 miles wide, shut in on three sides by ranges of hills. It is even more subjected to inundations than the plains of the Brahmaputra, but as the Surma and its tributaries have more permanent banks, the shifting compared with the banks of the Brahmaputra. The range of mountains which separates these two valleys projects at right angles from the Burmese system, and lies almost due east and west. At its western end it attains a he4ht of more than 4,600 feet in the peak of Nokrek, above the station of Tura. Here the hills are broken up into sharply-serrated ridges and deep valleys, all covered with forest. Farther east, in the Shillong peak, they reach a height of 6,450 feet •, but this is only the highest point in a table-land of which hardly any part falls much below 6,000 feet. The highest point in Assam is reached in Japvo, on the border of the Naga Hills Dis trict, still further eastward. The state of Manipur consists of a fertile valley, covering an area of about 650 square miles, surrounded by ranges of hills.
In Assam are found the valuable teak and sissoo trees, date and sago palms, the areca palm or betel-nut tree, the Indian fig-tree, oak, pine and bamboo. But the article of most com mercial importancegrown in Assam is tea, for the production of which there were 779 gardens in 1915, with a total area under crop of 383,821 acres, producing 245,385,920 pounds of manu factured tea. The plant was discovered growing in this region in 1821, but it was not till 1838 that the first shipment reached England.
Though not regarded as specifically distinct from the Chinese variety, the plant is much larger and more vigorous. Rice covers a large extent of the cultivated soil, occupying nearly 2,000,000 acres. The other crops include maize, pulse, oil-seeds, sugar-cane, hemp, jute, potatoes, etc. The State Forest Department controlled (1915) 4,528 square miles of forest, while the public forest land amounted to 18,218 square miles, a total of 22,746 square miles. In the jungles roam herds of elephants; in the dense and swampy parts of the forests the rhinoceros, tiger and wild buffalo abound; leopards, bears and wild hogs are numerous, as also are jackals, foxes, goats, deer and the venomous cobra. Coal, petroleum, limestone and iron are found, and gold dust is met with in many of the rivers. The climate is character ized by coolness and extreme humidity, the natural result of the great water surface and the extensive forests over which evaporation and condensation proceed, and the close prox imity of the hill ranges, on which an excessive precipitation takes place. Its most distinguish ing feature is the copious rainfall between March and May, at a time when precipitation over upper India is at its minimum. The year is thus roughly divided into two seasons, the cold season and the rains, the hot season of the rest of India being completely absent. Storms often occur in the spring months, generally accompanied by high winds and heavy local rainfall, but seldom take the form of destruc tive cyclones. From the beginning of November till the end of February the climate is cool and extremely pleasant, and at no period of the year is the heat excessive. Assam is subject to earth quakes. In 1607 hills are said to have been rent asunder and swallowed up; writing in 1837, McCosh reported that, some 20 years be fore, a village near Goalpara had completely disappeared, leaving a pool of water in its place. Severe shocks were felt at Silchar in 1809 and 1882, and in 1875 some damage was done to houses in Shillong and Gauhati. The greatest seismic disturbance, however, occurred 12 June 1897, when the station of Shillong was razed to the ground and nearly all masonry buildings in Gauhati and Sylhet were completely wrecked, while much damage was done in neighboring towns. Two Europeans and 1,540 natives were killed, the majority by landslips in the hills and by the falling in of river banks in Sylhet. In 1915 there were over 6,000 miles of roads in Assam, besides 2,770 miles of bridle roads, chiefly maintained by the Public Works Department.