484 PROCEEDINGS. 
a mother, then a turn takes place. She becomes as virtuous as @ 
saint, and courts her husband instead of other men. Husband and 
wife live as equals, and no inferiority of the wife is ever thought 
of in the settlement of family matters ; both work hard alike. 
Amongst the Lo-lo and other tribes the case is very different. 
The women have to work hard like beasts of burden to maintain 
their jealous husbands in idleness and comparative ease. Quarrels 
ending in serious fights are not uncommon between Lo-lo men, 
jealous of their wives, and Chinese soldiers, admirers of the ill-used 
women. In the prefecture of Li-chiang Fu and northern parts of 
the province I have seen the women of the Mu-su tribes working 
like slaves in their fields on the mountain sides, or carrying burdens 
in the valleys from place to place, clad in nothing better than an 
old piece of tattered cottonade about the loins, descending to the 
knees, and an undressed goatskin on their backs, fastened over 
their shoulders and across the chest with a raw hide thong. Thus 
arrayed, these poor women are exposed to the piercing cold of their 
snow-clad hills in winter, and to the scorching rays of a mid-day | 
sun in summer, whilst their lazy and jealous husbands remain ab 
home, to nurse the children, sharpen their swords, and keep their i 
powder dry. I have also seen the savage Lu-sn, or Li-su, in the 
prefecture of Yung-chang Fu, Western Yunnan, ploughing their 
unhealthy fields in the valley of the Lu-chiang River, with women — 
harnessed to their ploughs instead of cattle; the men held the 
ploughs, and were fully armed. 
A Li-su farmer does not at all hesitate to harness his wife and 
mother, sister and daughter, to his plough at any time, while he, 
with a cross-bow and quiver of poisoned arrows on his back, a long — 
sword in his girdle, and a short spear in one hand, follows the 
plough, and guides it in the furrow with his other hand. His 
father and uncle, or brother, son and son-in-law, all fully armed — 
to the teeth, sit and watch the approaches to the family estate, 
ready to pounce on any unsuspecting Chinaman who may chance — 
to halt on the way, astonished at the spectacle in the fields before 
him. As might be expected, many of these hardly used native 
women contract alliances with Chinese soldiers, who treat the 
