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With reference to the Khasi branch of the Mon-Anam family, it would seem reasonable to suppose that if they are not the autochthons of a portion of the hills on the southern bank of the Brahmaputra, and if they migrated to Assam from some other country, it is not unlikely that they followed the direction of the different irruptions of foreign peoples into Assam of which we have authentic data, i.e. from south-east to north-west, as was the case with the Ahom invaders of Assam who invaded Assam from their settlements in the Shan States via the Patkoi range, the different Burmese invasions, the movements of the Khamtis and, again, the Singphos, from the country to the east of the Hukong Valley.

There they are, occupiers of the soil for unknown centuries before the white man ever saw their faces many thousands of them still squatting there, cleaving, like bereaved Autochthons, to the bosom of the dear old mother who had whelped and so long nurtured them; and trying to make themselves believe that they are still masters of the continent.

These primitive tribes betray, physiologically, a Mongolian origin; and there are indications of considerable weight that they themselves had been, in ancient times, intruders, who, issuing from their seats in Asia, had invaded and dislocated the proper autochthons of Europe.

The earliest kings, those that built the pyramids, appear before us real in their personality, emerging out of misty legend or myth, and, earlier still, even the prehistoric races that antedated the very beginning of civilization. Whence came that first dynasty? Who invented writing? Were they autochthons? Hardly. These are questions left for further explorers to answer.

In the struggle for life, all memory of an Oriental parentage was lost; knowledge died away; religious ideas became debased; and the diverse populations sank into the same intellectual condition that they would have presented had they been proper autochthons of the soil. The religion of the barbarian Europeans was in many respects like that of the American Indians.