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, joined in marriage and bore numerous children. From the 

 two older ones, the first were of -the Sif an 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 a man. 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 all is 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 



