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Updated: June 17, 2025
The Khasis were our neighbours on the north of that district, and to the north-east was the State of Jaintia, ruled over by a chief of Khasi lineage, whose capital, Jaintiapur, was situated in the plain between the Surma river and the hills.
The Burmese force amounted to about six thousand men. They had erected strong stockades on each bank of the river Surma, and had thrown a bridge across to connect them. Captain Johnston advanced with a wing of the 10th Native Infantry, a company of the 23rd Native Infantry, and a small party of men of a local corps. Small as was this force, he divided it into two parties.
I proceeded on from thence and saw a hillock, the earth of which was in colour black as surma; when I passed over the hillock, I saw a large city, surrounded with a rampart with bastions at regular intervals; and a river of great width flowed on one side of the city. Proceeding on, I reached a gate, and invoking God, I entered it.
On hearing this exclamation, I said, "O friend, what dost thou say?" He replied, "O prince, do not you see the army of the jinns?" I answered, "I see nothing except you." Mubarak then took out a box containing surma, and with a needle applied to both my eyes the surma of Sulaiman.
A considerable number of Khasis earn their livelihood as porters, carrying potatoes to the markets on the Sylhet side of the district, from whence the crop is conveyed by means of country boats to the different places of call of river-steamers in the Surma Valley, the steamers carrying the potatoes to Calcutta.
Colonel Lister, writing in 1853, estimated that 20,000 maunds of iron were exported from the hills in the shape of hoes to the Assam Valley, and in lumps of pig iron to the Surma Valley, where it was used by boat-builders for clamps. Nowadays the smelting of iron is carried on in very few places.
In the meantime some one rubbed the eyes of all five with the surma of Sulaiman; two drops of tears fell from the eyes of each, and they saw an assembly of the fairies, who were waiting to receive them, dressed in rich habits of various colours, with vials of rose-water in their hands.
The surma is a black powder made of antimony, which the Asiatic women use on their eyelids, to give a superior lustre to their black or hazel eyes; when applied with taste, it certainly has that effect. It is likewise used for sore eyes, but I cannot say with what success.
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