4.4 Mamloo (the salt stone)

4.4

Mamloo

(the salt stone)[54]

As mentioned above, around 1834, Alexander Lish of the Serampore Mission built one of three schools at Mawmluh. The Welsh Mission built their second school in Mawmluh in 1842.

In 1844, Henry Yule reported that the village of Mamloo, unlike most of those on the heights which were generally rather bare, stood surrounded by a wood which extended into the village and amongst the houses[55]. The huts were built substantially of horizontal layers of planks painfully fashioned by the adze - a tool used for smoothing rough-cut wood. These planks, resting on one another edgewise, were kept in their places by stout posts, and the whole was roofed over with a sharply inclined thatch of bamboo leaves.

He also reported that a pig sty was an indispensable adjunct to every hut, and the pigs, which were of a handsome China breed. A distant view of the sloping village formed a very inviting picture, but he felt that here, as in other places, an efficient Municipal Commission was much needed. There was considerable difficulty in picking one's way through the village paths, and the scents, though not quite so bad as in some more civilized neighbourhoods, were anything but agreeable and suggest unpleasant recollections of Calcutta.

In about 1850, Hooker mentioned that the descent of the Mamloo spur was by steps, alternating with pebbly flats, for 1,500 feet, to a saddle which connected the Churra hills with those of Lisouplang to the west[56]. The rise was along a very steep narrow ridge to a broad, long grassy hill 3,500 feet high, where an extremely steep descent led to the valley of the Boga-panee river[57], and the great market of Chela (Shella), which was at the mouth of that river. The valley that lay across, formed by the Mamloo spur, was full of orange groves, whose brilliant green was particularly conspicuous from above.