It is dotted with hills on its south bank but the predominant scenery is of forest glade, running water, wide plains and large rivers with men cooling their heels and the engines of their vehicles while waiting for the ferry boat.
Till the oilfields of Gujarat were discovered, Assam was Indian’s only oil -producing state. There are other minerals in the mountains, probably copper and nickel in the Himalayas, in exploitable quantities, sillimanite and magnetite iron in the KhasiHills, and limestone of a quality suitable for both glass and cement manufacture in a number of places. but most to these deposits are now outside Assam, except f or coal at Ledo, petroleum in Lakhimpur and Sibsagar districts, and limestone in the Mikir Hills district.
The greatest alteration in the landscape occurred during the last century when over a thousand tea gardens sprang up in Assam. Tea needs plenty of rain, and most of it by night so that the bushes can have as much of sunshine by day to develop their leafiness. A tea garden has acres and acres of tea bushes, each one clipped in stand by itself. they are not allowed to run into each other as the women who pluck combinations of two young leaves enclosing a bud would not be able to get around.Order and neatness are the great needs of a tea garden, and though it grows shrubs for its produce and trees to throw shade on the the shrubs, it looks so different from the natural jungle or even the arranged forest plantation. The shade trees are mostly the Siris.
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