nd deep valleys, through which wide rivers flow, there are
at intervals considerable stretches of flat land, which are under
partial cultivation. Here villages of some size are found, and among
the people which inhabit them are strange types we have not previously
seen in Burma, and customs which are curious. The Shans, for instance,
have the habit of tattooing their faces and legs and centre of their
chests, while, their scanty clothing not permitting the use of
pockets, they carry upon their backs little baskets of wicker-work, in
which are placed their knives, tobacco, and such other articles as a
pocket might have accommodated. The Yunnanese, wearing huge plaited
hats of straw and curious slippers of the same material, but whose
other garments are so thin and baggy as to mark them indifferent to
the cold, are in marked contrast to the Kachins, who wear an elaborate
costume of heavy woollen material of many colours. The men, whose hair
is long and tied in a knot on the top of the head, after the manner of
the Burmese, wear a simple scarf tied round the head in place of a
hat, while the women, who wear a costume much like the men, have as
their head-covering a handkerchief or scarf folded flat upon the head.
All have their ears bored, the lobes being so large as not only to
enable them to wear ear ornaments of unusual size, but often to serve
as a handy receptacle for a cigar! When travelling the Kachins usually
carry in their hands double-ended spears, whose shafts are covered
with a kind of red plush from which large fringes hang; but these are
only ceremonial weapons, and show that their intentions are pacific.
Like the Shans, they dispense with pockets in their clothing, but
instead wear suspended under their arm a cloth bag, which is often
prettily embroidered.

Though, as I have mentioned, the forests of Mid-Burma--and, indeed,
generally throughout the country--abound in game, which ranges from
elephant and rhinoceros down to the smallest deer, and while every
tree and thicket is a home for birds, all forms of animal life appear
to avoid the fever-infested highlands of North-East Burma. In some
places, however, strange freaks of Nature occur. On the high plateau
through which the Myit-nge River flows, though the forest and jungle
is more or less deserted, scattered over the plain are conical
limestone crags, which are alive with monkeys; and while the
innumerable species of insects which infest the warmer forest