88 HUNTING WITH THE KARENS 



killed buffalo. On the Burma side the Karens are 

 more at home in the jungle, but those of the border 

 line are more like the Siamese, who never ven- 

 ture into jungle not known to some of their people. 

 The little village where I picked up my men was 

 the temporary abode of a small tribe, with its 

 about one dozen houses standing on bamboo poles 

 eight feet above the ground, and straggling along 

 a small stream for several miles. Here they had 

 made a clearing and were cultivating rice which, 

 together with a kind of pumpkin (gourd), wild- 

 growing bananas, some jungle vegetables, and 

 chickens constitute their food. The houses were 

 placed to command the rice fields, over which con- 

 stant guard is maintained by a system of scare- 

 crows and crudely constructed noise-making im- 

 plements. For example : running from the house 

 to the padi fields, sometimes as much as one hun- 

 dred yards away, were lines of bamboo poles every 

 one with a hole in its top. Through these holes 

 a native-made rope was attached at the padi field 

 end to a very large, thoroughly dried, hollow 

 bamboo placed upon another of the same kind at 

 an angle of forty-five degrees. Always someone 

 is on watch at the house end of this line. When 

 birds or animals steal upon the padi field, the rope 

 is pulled and let go quickly and repeatedly, which 

 alternately lifts and drops one hollow bamboo upon 



