ns, however, are the White and the Black. The
latter class, themselves the owners of land, claim that all the White
were originally slaves, and that those who are now free have escaped at
some previous period from servitude. Men, as usual among such tribes,
are scarcely distinguishable from the ordinary _Han Ren_. It is the
women, with their peculiar head-dress and picturesque skirts, who
maintain the distinguishing features of the race. For the most part, the
Nou-su are not idolaters; no idols are in their houses. That portion of
the tribe which migrated across the Yangtze, secure among the mountains,
has never ceased to harass the Chinese, who now dwell on land which the
Nou-su themselves once tilled, or at least inhabited; but they have been
driven into remoter districts, and are only found away from the highways
of Chinese travel. The race, too, is dying out--in this area at all
events--and the Nou-su themselves reckon that their numbers have
decreased by one-half during the last thirty years. This is one of the
saddest facts. The insanitation of their dwellings, their rough diet,
and frequent riotings in wine, opium and other evils, are quickly
playing havoc in their ranks, giving the strong the opportunity of
enriching themselves at the expense of the weak, with frequent fighting
about the division of land.

Europeans who can speak the language of the Nou-su are numbered on the
fingers of one hand.

To one who has traveled in this neighborhood for any length of time, it
must be apparent that the unique method generally adopted by the Nou-su,
that is, the landlord class, to get rich quickly is to kill off their
next-door neighbor. The lives these men live with nothing but scandal
and licentiousness to pass their time, are grossly and horribly wicked
when viewed by the broadest-minded Westerner. They all live in fear of
their lives, and are each afraid of the others, all entertaining a
secret hatred, and all ever on the alert to devise some safe scheme to
murder the owner of some land they are anxious of annexing to their
own--and in the doing of the deed to save their own necks. If they
succeed, they are accounted clever men. As I write, I hear of a man,
quite a youngster, himself an exceedingly wealthy man, who killed his
brother and confiscated his property with no compunction whatever. When
tackled on the subject, he said he could do nothing else, for if he had
not killed his brother his brother would have kill