142

Report on Kála-ázar.

nigodam, 8 miles to the west of the former, being com-
paratively early attacked. It has only reached the extreme
east end of this series of villages during the last two or three
years, and in the last portion between the place where the
grand trunk road crosses the river, 4 miles from Silghat,
and a place called Joklabanda, some 4 miles to the east of
Silghat; but on the Kulung river, the disease is still on the
increase. Beyond the last-named place there stretches a
long tract of jungle extending for some 40 miles with
scarcely a village in it, and here the spread of the disease
has ceased for the time being at any rate.

         Along the base of the hills to the south-west of the
district, on the other hand, the disease early spread as,far
as Karakhana and Lunka (on the Assam-Bengal Railway),
and it has since got at least as far as Lumding on the western
border of the Nambar forest—a dense, uninhabited wood,
which stretches between the Mikir and Naga Hills for many
miles, reaching up to the Golaghat district. Across this
forest there is no traffic, but the railway is being pushed
through it, but will not be open for some years yet, by which
time all danger of the disease spreading up that way should
be at an end by reason of its dying out of the Nowgong district,
which it is now taking place, especially in the southern portion
of the district. The Mikir Hills stand then as a bulwark
between the attacked portions of district of Nowgong and
the subdivision of Golaghat, and indeed the whole of the
Sibsagar and Dibrugarh districts, for I visited Golaghat and
travelled back to Nowgong along the narrow tract of country
between the Mikir Hills and the Brahmaputra river, but
found no cases of kála-ázar there. The grand trunk road
runs through this part, but there is little traffic on it,
and for some years past a careful watch has been kept
for any persons coming up the road suffering from the
disease, and in one instance a whole village, which had
migrated from Nowgong, was found to be suffering from it,
and was sent back, and this was the very village that had