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Dress and Arms.

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tribes are expert hunters, killing innumerable bears, mhittons, and wild elephants, besides boars, muskdeer, and Mishmee ta-kin, a large animal peculiar to their hills, somewhat resembling a cross between the deer and bull. There is not a live specimen of this animal in Europe, but several are kept in the palace grounds of the Emperor of Pekin, and a stuffed specimen may be seen at the British Museum. The Mishmees are keen traders in slaves and knives, which they buy from the Thibetans and Khamtees in Burmah, in exchange for musk and teta. They also bring wax and teta to Sudiya to barter for gaudy handkerchiefs, blankets, and burra cupras, a large cloth, some twelve yards long and two broad, made in Lower Assam, of the Reah fibre, which is everlasting in wear.

The women, when young, are pretty. Like the men, they are hardy and active, tripping along under heavy burdens with the ease and graceful gait which belongs only to the true daughters of the mountains. Free and unreserved in their manners to strangers, they are yet modest. Their scanty, but picturesque, dress consists of a cotton jacket, with short sleeves, buttoning over the chest like a waistcoat, and reaching half-way down their waist, and a tight-fitting plaited cotton skirt, leaving the calf bare. Their ornaments are many and peculiar. Round the head they wear a silver band, in the shape of a coronet, broad above the forehead, and tapering off on each side towards the back of the head. In the rims of their ears they wear large rings of silver or brass, two or three inches in diameter, and in the lobe they insert

large stud-shaped pieces of silver, the size of a penny piece. Round their necks they hang strings of beads, chiefly red and white, and coils of brass wire-the necklaces of the wives of chiefs consisting of beads and wire, sometimes weighing as much as ten or twelve pounds. They also wear rings and bracelets of silver and brass, principally of Chinese manufacture, and procured from the Thibetans.

Such was the dress and appearance of the party of Mishmees who kept our camp alive during a greater part of the night, and into whose country I was about to enter. Their wild ways and picturesque style of costume had already prepossessed me in their favour, and I felt no fear in venturing among them in their mountain strongholds.

One of the men of the party was a Meju Mishmee, and Chowsam secured his services as guide to the Meju country, as the morrow's march would take us from the plains into the dreaded Mishmee hills.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE MISHMEE HILLS.

Difficult Travelling-The Negro Interpreter-Waxed Meal-Short Commons-Mishmee Pork-Kunsong - Mishmee Houses-Heads—The Brama-panee-Rope Bridges-The Landslip-Supply of Fish-Chief Poso-Leech-bites—The Chief's Jester—A Churlish Host-Mishmee

Demons.

BEFORE the sun was over the distant Patkoi range we had commenced the ascent of the lower ranges of the Mishmee hills. The easiest route would have been the path which led along the right bank of the Bramapootra, but the Meju guide was ignorant of the country, and Chowsam urged that this route would take us through the district of the clan whose chief, Kysa, had murdered the fathers Crick and Bourie. As this chief had been captured and eventually hanged by the British authorities the clan cherished a blood feud against us, a very sufficient reason for avoiding their country: I was content to choose the less frequented route, hoping by this means to get on to the Thibetan frontiers before the Lamas had time to concert plans for stopping me.

Months spent in climbing the mountainous country of Eastern Thibet had, I thought, inured me to mountain travelling, but the toil of the first day's march in the

Mishmee hills was almost too much for my strength, weakened by fever. At times our path, which was often scarcely discernible, led along the almost perpendicular sides of the hills, which, as we advanced, became veritable mountains. Often we scrambled, monkey-like, along their declivities, holding on by means of tangled roots, which formed a network sufficiently strong to bear our weight; occasionally we crossed deep chasms by means of bamboo scaffolding rudely constructed by the guides and the party of Mishmees who were returning with us, and in some places long plaited bamboo ropes, let down over horrible precipices, afforded the only means of descent to the valleys below.

On halting for our mid-day meal of cold rice the negro was found to be missing, and I feared that he had deserted; but in half an hour or so he tottered up between two Mishmees, and throwing himself down before the fire, declared, in an agonised voice, that he could proceed no farther. The fellow's eyes were starting out of his head; the whites, in contrast with his ebony skin, gave him a frightful appearance; his swollen tongue hung from between his thick parched lips, discoloured by the marks of dried saliva, while he shivered as with an ague. Chowsam shook his head on seeing him, and I was quite puzzled to account for his state. Suddenly, however, I remembered that, from the time of our leaving Sudiya until the day after we left Chowsam's village, the fellow had been continually drunk, and hard work, together with the want of stimulants, had reduced him to his present condition. I opened one of my bottles of port and

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administered a tumblerful, into which I put fifteen drops of chlorodyne. The effect of this was ludicrous; the poor wretch laughed and cried alternately, and then, gradually recovered his strength, sat up and smoked a pipe, and in an hour was enabled to continue the march. I foresaw from this little incident that the negro must have something to replace his grog or he would speedily succumb, and I afterwards hit upon an ingenious plan of supplying his wants without calling again on my cellar.

Towards sundown we reached the first Degaroo Mishmee house, utterly exhausted. The brave little Philip, though he was quite done up, asked, as usual, what he should get me to eat—he never once during the two years that he was with me neglected to make this enquiry at the end of a day's march-but, too tired to eat, I rolled myself up in a blanket and in a few minutes was fast asleep. Somewhere about midnight Chowsam wakened me, as the negro was ill and unable to sleep, so I put in force the plan I had determined upon for supplying his want of stimulant by giving him twenty drops of chlorodyne in about a teaspoonful of water, which had the effect of sending him off to sleep before I had finished the pipe with which I solaced myself in the absence of food.

In the morning our Mishmee hosts brought us some most unpalatable meal, made from the seed of the sago palm, mixed with bees' wax. We were all too exhausted to attempt marching that day, so resolved to halt where we were for the day, in spite of the prospect of scanty

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