earliest authentic information which we possess of the institutions
of the Khasi race. Dr. Buchanan-Hamilton, who spent several years at
the beginning of the 19th Century in collecting information regarding
the people of Eastern India, during which he lived for some time
at Goalpara in the Brahmaputra Valley, confused the Khasis with the
Garos, and his descriptions apply only to the latter people. The name
Garo, however, is still used by the inhabitants of Kamrup in speaking
of their Khasi neighbours to the South, and Hamilton only followed
the local usage. In 1826 Mr. David Scott, after the expulsion of the
Burmese from Assam and the occupation of that province by the Company,
entered the Khasi Hills in order to negotiate for the construction of
a road through the territory of the Khasi Siem or Chief of Nongkhlaw,
which should unite Sylhet with Gauhati. A treaty was concluded with
the chief, and the construction of the road began. At Cherrapunji
Mr. Scott built for himself a house on the plateau which, two years
later, was acquired from the Siem by exchange for land in the plains,
as the site of a sanitarium. [6] Everything seemed to promise well,
when the peace was suddenly broken by an attack made, in April 1829,
by the people of Nongkhlaw on the survey party engaged in laying
out the road, resulting in the massacre of two British officers and
between fifty and sixty natives. This led to a general confederacy of
most or the neighbouring chiefs to resist the British, and a long and
harassing war, which was not brought to a close till 1833. Cherrapunji
then became the headquarters of the Sylhet Light Infantry, whose
commandant was placed in political charge of the district, including
the former dominions in the hills of the Raja of Jaintia, which he
voluntarily relinquished in 1835 on the confiscation of his territory
in the plains.

Cherrapunji, celebrated as the place which has the greatest measured