582 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 
skillfully tailored, as in our country. It adapts itself to the shoul- 
ders, and is fitted to the neck by a cord passed through a fold-in the 
upper border of the piece of goods. The mantle and the skirt com- 
prise the entire costume. 
The Chinese at one time offered for sale their cotton fabrics and 
recently those imported from Europe. The Lolos now purchase 
these, and even in the remote districts of Leang Shan nearly all the 
men wear cotton pantaloons and blouse, and the women wear a skirt 
and waist of like material. J have, however, in the mountains of 
Mao Nieou Shan seen some women slaves wearing coarse, gray or 
black, woolen petticoats, which are never white, though you fre- 
quently see white mantles. The petticoats are the natural color of 
the wool. I have not ascertained whether the Lalos know the art of 
dyeing fabrics, but at the present time, however it may have been 
heretofore, it is certain that for a long period the cotton fabrics 
spotted with bright colors (red, green, blue, and violet), which the 
women as well as the men have sought for the turban and their 
blouse, have been furnished by the Chinese. Once, says Vou Ka, 
the turban of the young man, as well as the hat of the young woman, 
or the bonnet of the young girl, were of wool. The fleece of his 
sheep furnished the Lolo with all his clothing, even his head 
covering. 
The carpenter is the man who is but little employed, who works 
both with the hoe in the field and with the axe in the village. The 
squaring of timbers for structural work is so primitive, mortising so 
rarely done, the framing so rudimentary, by simply laying beams 
together to hold them in place, that it is useless to look for art from 
the Lolo carpenter. 
As to what we term a cabinet maker, that profession is never 
found among those tribes, for the simple reason that the Lolo con- 
. siders all furniture as useless. 
The shoemaker would have little to do, for the Lolo either goes 
barefooted or wears straw sandals that nearly anyone can plait. 
The blacksmith trade is the most important of all. Hoes are 
needed for the farmer, as well as a small plowshare, a very primi- 
tive kind of implement borrowed from the Chinese. And above all, 
the Lolo must have iron heads for lances and arrows, and ordinary 
blades for cutlasses, fine blades being purchased from the Tibetans. 
‘The blacksmiths make nothing at all for structural work, not even 
hinges or handles for the doors; not a nail or a bolt—some strips of 
bamboo or bindweed answering for all these things. This is because 
the simple Lolo house is built as by a turn of the hand and can be 
completed in a day. This fact was proved by me several times, and 
I was not at all astonished in the case of the ordinary hut, the real 
home of the primitive mountaineer. Of course, more care is taken 
