580 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 
very commonly used in China as varnish, somewhat resembling 
our fig tree, and built an ark in which they took refuge. Then the ark 
floated on the water over all the land. The waters having at last 
receded, the ark rested on Olou Mountain. The brother and sister 
having thus escaped the catastrophe that destroyed all other human 
beings, joed in marriage and bore numerous children. From the 
two older ones, the first were of the Sifan type (an aboriginal race of 
the Far West very near Tibet), the second the Lolo type, and the 
youngest the Chinese type. Fearing a new deluge they undertook to 
build a very high house. A Pou Ouosa (a deity) tried to dissuade 
them from this work, but they would not listen even to his threats. 
But when the workman on top of the structure said: ‘Bring a beam,’ 
and the one who was below sent up a stone, then, no longer under- 
standing one another, they separated. The Sifan emigrated toward 
the north, the Lolo to the the east, and the Chinese to the south.” 
There is another version of the deluge. ‘‘Two brothers were tilling 
the ground. The god, A Pou Ouosa, said to them: ‘Do not dig.’ 
But they dug the more. A Pou Ouosa repeated: ‘Do not dig, the 
end of the world is coming.’ One believed the god, the other not at 
all. To the one who believed, A Pou Ouosa said: ‘Make an ark of 
wood, you and your sister, and when the waters shall come you shall 
float within.’ He said to the other: ‘Build an ark of iron.’ The 
deluge came; the brother and his sister who had taken refuge in the 
iron ark were drowned; the wooden ark floated and saved those who 
had believed in the word of God. The waters having lowered, the 
brother and his sister came out of the ark. The god, A Pou Ouosa, 
then said to them: ‘There are no human beings on the earth, you 
must marry.’ They hesitated, but such miraculous things were going 
on at that moment before their dazzled eyes that they yielded, under- 
standing that it was the will of A Pou Ouosa. Their first offspring 
had flat feet; this was a bear. Then there was a second which bore 
some resemblance to a real man; this was a monkey. At last there 
came into the world a being that looked like a human being, and this 
one was really aman. Whence comes the tradition: ‘The bear, the 
monkey, and man, all of the same nature.’ ”’ 
Funeral rites —In contrast with the Chinese, the Lolo of Kient- 
_ chang has no cult for the dead, for ancestors. When a member 
of a clan has drawn his last breath, they carry him in a wooden box 
called the ‘‘mortuary box.” They burn the body lying in the foetal 
position, and allis ended. They do not even gather the ashes to take. 
home. And in the future no kind of religious rite will be rendered to 
the shades of the deceased; he has absolutely disappeared from the 
clan. 
In order to complete this review of the principal characteristics of 
the Lolo mountaineer, I shall here recall an interesting conversation 
