In the Mikir Hills there are summits which attain 4,000 feet, but the greater part of the block is of much lower elevation. The rock is chiefly gneiss and granite with few traces of overlying formations and the whole is clothed with forest growth, chiefly of bamboo, figs of different species, cinnamon, artocarpus, nahor (Mesua ferrea), and a few other trees valuable for their timber. The soil is light and soon exhausted by cropping. It is naturally most fertile in the valleys where the deepest deposits are found. The Mikir Hills, in 1886 when Mr. Stack wrote, had been very little explored by Europeans and their interior was almost unknown.
To the north, from Koliabor to Kaziranga, they abut on the Brahmaputra only a narrow strip of country traversed by the southern Grand Trunk road, intervening between them and the river. This strip has few inhabitants and little cultivation, and is covered with high grass and cotton tree (semal) jungle, the haunt of wild buffalo and rhinoceros.
To the east is the great Nambar forest, a dense area of high trees occupying the Dhansiri valley from Dimapur to within ten miles of Golaghat. To the south-west is the valley of the Jamuna, now traversed by the railway from Gauhati to Lumding, is a region of tall grass and sparse tree jungle. The plain which is formed by the alluvial valley of the Kopili (or Kupli) river and its affiuents, the Jamuna and the Diyaung (the latter coming from the North Cachar Hills), next intervenes; and to the west the land rises again in the northern skirts of the Jaintia and Khasi Hills. Here the country is of the same character as in the Mikir Hills, but better known. It consists of a series of plateaus or shelves rising from the level of the valley, composed of gneiss and granite, and covered with a red clay soil, the result of the decomposition of the metamorphic sandstones which overlay the igneous rock. The jungle here also is chiefly of bamboo, with a few patches of valuable forest, chiefly sal (Shorea robusta), still surviving; but most of the larger timber has been destroyed by the secular practice of axe and fire cultivation.
It is in this hilly country and in the plains at its base, that the Mikir people are found. The region is continuous, and is distributed between the districts (from east to west) of Sibsagar, Nowgong, North Cachar, the Jaintia and Khasi Hills, and Kamrup. It is malarious and unhealthy for unacclimatized persons with a very moist climate and is wanting in the breezy amenities of the higher plateaus of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills; but, due to the recent prevalence of Kala-azar, the inhabitants appear to have acquired some degree of immunity against the noxious influences of the locality. Side by side with the Mikirs in the Mikir Hills, dwell the Rengma Nagas (who are recent immigrants from the eastern side of the Dhansiri); in the Jamuna and Diyaung valleys, the Dimasa or Kacharis; in the Jaintia Hills, the Kukis aud Syntengs; and in the Khasi Hills and along the Nowgong and Kamrup borders, the Lalungs and a few settlements of Khasis.
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