FROM TONKIN TO INDIA 



bank. I kept the photographic materials dry by taking them on my 

 head ; and Nam, who loved not horseback, did the same for the 

 collecting gun by holding it at arm's-length above his head. Thus 

 Camoens swam with the " Lusiad " in his hand ; only our cook was 

 not a poet, and thought most of his pipe and his pot, after his own 

 skin. 



We slept that and several succeeding nights among some Hou- 

 Nis, tormented by legions of fleas that recalled Madagascar. The 

 inhabitants were uniformly hospitable, and this tribe pronounced 

 themselves in their own dialect Han. The women had their lower 

 teeth stained with a scarlet dye made from a tree called sena. There 

 were no musical instruments nor writing amongst them, they did 

 not dance, and they prayed to a superior being whom they called 

 Ponkhu, and to whom they erected small bamboo altars. In pro- 

 portion as we neared the Black River the country became more 

 cheerful, with a formation of sandstone or slaty schist. The hills 

 were clothed with tufts of feathery bamboos or deeper groves of 

 fig-trees, with roots exposed like feelers of a giant polypus, and with 

 a species of palm the head of which expanded in a sheaf ot wind- 

 tossed dark green leaves less formal than ordinary. Other trees, 

 again, were laden with violet-tinted, sweet-smelling blossoms, which 

 almost hid their stems. 



We should have enjoyed this part more had it not been for 



renewed trouble with our mafous. They were slack, and we had to 



hurry them up, with the result that three, including the little urchin 



and his father, deserted. Their defection had a bad effect on the 



others, and we were constrained to lessen their baggage duties, and 



to talk freely of the gratuity with which those that remained loyal 



would be able to make merry when we got to Ssumao. That 



haven of delight was not now very far distant, and they would be 



68 



