A PILGRIMAGE 75 



like head covering is fashioned; sometimes it may 

 be only a handful of leaves gathered nearby ; some- 

 times fruit. I never saw betel-nut offered. The 

 low caste Siamese of the jungle have few wants, 

 and live like animals, eating chiefly wild fruits and 

 rice, which they raise in small, cleared spots, 

 wherever they happen to settle temporarily. Like 

 the Karens, the jungle people of Burma, they are 

 always on the move, and in common with all mixed- 

 caste Siamese are petty thieves of an incurable 

 propensity. Yet they are obedient, servile to an 

 unpleasant degree from the Westerner's view- 

 point. They manufacture nothing save crudest 

 domestic household necessities and personal orna- 

 ments from bamboo. Clothes are of slight conse- 

 quence. On the jungle edge they go uncovered, 

 men and women, above the waist, the panung 

 reaching within four inches of the knee ; but deep 

 in the jungle they are practically naked. Their 

 single implement is a long-bladed, butcher-like 

 knife used as path maker, as weapon (together 

 with a wood spear) , and industrially, in fashioning 

 out of the ubiquitous bamboo their ornaments, 

 their buckets, their rope, their string, their houses 

 and the food receptacles which take the place of 

 pots and pans and plates. Nearly all of the jungle 

 folk on both sides the Siam-Burma line tattoo the 

 thigh, sometimes from knee to hip, more often 



