(9)
The presence of the Kachins on the Upper Irrawaddy has been accounted for in the preceding paragraph. They are late comers from the north-west, just as the Shans, whose movements will be touched upon below, are migrants from the east. The real prehistoric inhabitants of the country along the Irrawaddy valley from Bhamo due north must be looked for elsewhere than among the Shans and the Kachins. We find them in the Marus, the Szis and the Lashis, who, though they have been often regarded in the past as Kachins, are not Kachins, and who, moreover, speak vernaculars that present features that are strikingly like those of Burmese. These hill people, now more or less scattered by the Kachin irruption, extend northwards through the Myitkyina District, past the Confluence and up the N'maikha, or eastern branch of the Irrawaddy, and it is a reasonable inference that this trial of cognate tribes speaking tongues that are closely allied to Burmese marks the course of the prehistoric Burman's ingress into the country that now bears his name.
North of the Confluence our information is fragmentary, but the evidence of Macgregor, Woodthorpe, Errol Gray, Pottinger and Prince Henri of Orleans all shows that to the west of the N'maikha in the region with which we are concerned the preponderating elements are Kachin and Mishmi; that immediately to the east of the Malikha, in the wedge of hill land that lies between it and the N'maikha, come the people known to Errol Gray as Khunnongs and to Prince Henri as Kiutzes, and that the Lashi and Maru country falls to the east of this again in the immediate neighbourhood of the N'maikha, According to both the last travellers, the Malikha seems to mark a clear dividing ethnic line which I would call the line of separation at this point between the Eastern and Western Tibeto-Burmans. The accounts of Prince
