of coarse quality, varying from dark brown to jet black. In stature there is perhaps a little difference in favour of the Kabyle, and he appears also to be of heavier build and more muscular. Both are clearly long-headed. Some, however, of the purer type of Kabyles in Kabylia proper have fair skins, ruddy complexions and blue or grey eyes. In fact there are two distinct types of Kabyles: those which by much admixture have approximated to Arab and negroid types, and those which preserve Libyan features. Active, energetic and enterprising, the Kabyle is to be found far from home—as a soldier in the French army, as a workman in the towns, as a field labourer, or as a pedlar or trader earning the means of purchasing his bit of ground in his native village. The Kabyles are Mahommedans of the Sunnite branch and the Malikite rite, looking to Morocco as the nearer centre of their religion. Some of the Kabyles retain their vernacular speech, while others have more or less completely adopted Arabic. The best known of the Kabyle dialects is the Zouave[1] or Igaouaouen, those speaking it having been settled on the northern side of the Jurjura at least from the time of Ibn Khaldun; it is the principal basis of Hanoteau’s Essai de grammaire kabyle (Paris, 1858). Unlike their southern brethren, the Kabyles have no alphabet, and their literature is still in the stage of oral transmission, for the most part by professional reciters. Hanoteau’s Poésies populaires de la Kabylie du Jurjura (Paris, 1867) gives the text and translation of a considerable number of historical pieces, proverbial couplets and quatrains, dancing songs, &c.
Consult General L. L. C. Faidherbe and Dr Paul Topinard, Instructions sur l’anthropologie de l’Algérie (Paris, 1874); Melchior Joseph Eugène Daumas, Le Sahara algérien (Paris, 1845) and Mœurs et coutumes de l’Algérie (1857); De Slane’s translation of Ibn Khaldun’s Hist. des Berbères (Algiers, 1852); Aucapitaine, Les Kabyles et la colonie de l’Algérie (Paris, 1864) and Les Beni M’zab (1868); L. J. A. C. Hanoteau and A. Letourneux, La Kabylie et les coutumes kabyles (Paris, 1893) ; Charmetant, in Jahrbücher der Verbreitung des Glaubens (1874); Masqueray, Formation des cités . . de l’Algérie (1886); Dugas, La Kabylie et le peuple kabyle (Paris, 1878); Récoux, La Démographie de l’Algérie (Paris, 1880); J. Liorel, Races berbères: les Kabyles (Paris, 1893); MacIver and Wilkin, Libyan Notes (1901).
KACH GANDAVA, or Kachhi (Kach, Kej, Kiz), a low-lying flat region in Baluchistan separating the Bugti hills from those of Kalat. It is driven, like a wedge, into the frontier mountain system and extends for 150 m. from Jacobabad to Sibi, with nearly as great a breadth at its base on the Sind frontier. Area, 5310 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 82,909. The Mula pass, which connects it with the Kalat highlands, was once (when the ancient city of Kandabel was the capital of Gandava) a much trodden trade highway, and is still a practicable route though no longer a popular one. The soil is fertile wherever it can be irrigated by the floods brought down from the surrounding hills; but much of the central portion is sandy waste. It is traversed by the North-Western railway. The climate is unhealthy in summer, when pestilential hot winds are sometimes destructive to life. The annual rainfall averages only 3 in. Kachhi, though subject to the khan of Kalat, is administered under the tribal system. There are no schools, dispensaries or gaols.
See Baluchistan District Gazetteer, vol. vi. (Bombay, 1907).
KACHIN HILLS, a mountainous tract in Upper Burma, inhabited by the Kachin or Chingpaw, who are known on the Assam frontier as Singphos. Owing to the great number of tribes, sub-tribes and clans of the Kachins, the part of the Kachin hills which has been taken under administration in the Myitkyina and Bhamo districts was divided into 40 Kachin hill tracts (recently reduced to five). Beyond these tracts there are many Kachins in Katha, Möng Mit and the northern Shan States. The country within the Kachin hill tracts is roughly estimated at 19,177 sq. m., and consists of a series of ranges, for the most part running north and south, and intersected by valleys, all leading towards the Irrawaddy, which drains the country. There were 64,405 Kachins enumerated at the census of 1901. Philological investigations show that it is probable that the progenitors of the Kachins or Chingpaw were the Indo-Chinese race who, before the beginnings of history, but after the Môn-Annam wave had covered Indo-China, forsook their home in western China to pour over the region where Tibet, Assam, Burma and China converge, and that the Chingpaw are the residue left round the headquarters of the Irrawaddy and the Chindwin after those branches, destined to become the Tibetans, the Nagas, the Burmans and the Kuki Chins, had gone westwards and southwards. In the middle of the 19th century the southern limit of the Kachins was 200 m. farther north than it is now. Since then the race has been drifting steadily southward and eastward, a vast aggregate of small independent clans united by no common government, but all obeying a common impulse to move outwards from their original seats along the line of least resistance. Now the Kachins are on both sides of the border of Upper Burma, and are a force to be reckoned with by frontier administrators. According to the Kachin Hill Tribes Regulation of 1895, administrative responsibility is accepted by the British government on the left bank of the Irrawaddy for the country south of the Nmaikha, and on the right bank for the country south of a line drawn from the confluence of the Malikha and Nmaikha through the northern limit of the Laban district and including the jade mines. The tribes north of this line were told that if they abstained from raiding to the south of it they would not be interfered with. South of that line peace was to be enforced and a small tribute exacted, with a minimum of interference in their private affairs. On the British side of the border the chief objects have been the disarmament of the tribes and the construction of frontier and internal roads. A light tribute is exacted.
The Kachins have been the object of many police operations and two regular expeditions: (1) Expedition of 1892–93. Bhamo was occupied by the British on the 28th of December 1885, and almost immediately trouble began. Constant punitive measures were carried on by the military police; but in December 1892 a police column proceeding to establish a post at Sima was heavily attacked, and simultaneously the town of Myitkyina was raided by Kachins. A force of 1200 troops was sent to put down the rising. The enemy received their final blow at Palap, but not before three officers were killed, three wounded, and 102 sepoys and followers killed and wounded. (2) Expedition of 1895–96. The continued misconduct of the Sana Kachins from beyond the administrative border rendered punitive measures necessary. They had remained unpunished since the attack on Myitkyina in December 1892. Two columns were sent up, one of 250 rifles from Myitkyina, the other of 200 rifles from Mogaung, marching in December 1895. The resistance was insignificant, and the operations were completely successful. A strong force of military police is stationed at Myitkyina, with several outposts in the Kachin hills, and the country is never wholly free from crimes of violence committed by the Kachins.
KADUR, a district of Mysore state, in southern India, with an area of 2813 sq. m. Pop. (1901), 362,752, showing an increase of 9% in the decade. The larger portion of the district consists of the Malnad or hill country, which contains some of the wildest mountain scenery in southern India. The western frontier is formed by the chain of the Ghats, of which the highest peaks are the Kudremukh (6215 ft.) and the Meruti Gudda (5451 ft.). The centre is occupied by the horse-shoe range of the Baba Budans, containing the loftiest mountain in Mysore, Mulaingiri (6317 ft.). The Maidan or plain country lying beneath the amphitheatre formed by the Baba Budan hills is a most fertile region, well watered, and with the famous “black cotton soil.” The principal rivers are the Tunga and Bhadra, which rise near each other in the Ghats, and unite to form the Tungabhadra, a tributary of the Kistna. The eastern region is watered by the Vedavati. At the point where this river leaves the Baba Budan hills it is embanked to form two extensive tanks which irrigate the lower valley. From all the rivers water is drawn off into irrigation channels by means of anicuts or weirs. The chief natural wealth of Kadur is in its forests, which contain inexhaustible supplies of the finest timber, especially teak, and also furnish shelter for the coffee plantations. Iron is found and smelted at the foot of the hills, and corundum exists in certain localities. Wild beasts and game are numerous, and fish are abundant.
- ↑ From the enlistment of Kabyles speaking the Zouave dialect the Zouave regiments of the French army came to be so called.
