Manufactures.

The manufactures of the Khasis are few in number, and do not seem
to show any tendency to increase. On the contrary, two of the most
important industries, the smelting of iron ore and the forging of
iron implements therefrom, and the cotton-spinning industries at
Mynso and Suhtnga, show signs of dying out. Ploughshares and hoes
and bill-hooks can now be obtained more cheaply from the plains than
from the forges in the hills, and Manchester piece goods are largely
taking the place of cloths of local manufacture. The iron industry
in former days was an important one, and there is abundant evidence
that the workings were on a considerable scale, e.g. at Nongkrem
and Laitlyngkot, in the shape of large granite boulders which have
fallen to the ground from the sides of the hills owing to the softer
rock which filled the interstices between the boulders having been
worked out by the ironworkers, their process being to dig out the
softer ferruginous rock, and then extract the iron ore from it by
means of washing. The softer rock having been removed, the heavier
portions fell by their own weight, and rolled down to the bottom of
the slopes, the result being the great number of boulders to be seen
near the sites of these workings.

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. There are still smelting-houses at Nongkrem
and Nongsprung, but these are practically the only places left where
smelting of iron ore goes on: there are many forges where rough iron