It has eight rowers, carries a gun--it is a twelve-pounder howitzer--that I have had cut short, so that it is only about a foot long.

Of course it won't carry far, but that is not necessary.

Its charge is a pound of powder and a ten-pound bag of bullets and, at a couple of hundred yards, the balls scatter enough to sweep two or three canoes coming abreast and, as we can charge and fire the little thing three times in a minute, it is all that we require, for practical purposes.
"It is only on a few of the rivers we go up that there is any fear of trouble.

On the river from Sylhet to the east and its branches in Kathee or, as it is sometimes called, Kasi, the country is comparatively settled.

The Goomtee beyond Oudypore is well enough, until it gets into Kaayn, which is what they call independent.