Through the Lutzu Country to Men-kong 89 
impassable gorges through which the river flowed. A narrow 
path, said to traverse these gorges, was now under water, 
though exposed during winter ; so narrow was it, however, 
that loaded porters could not at any time negotiate it. 
Could one ascend straight up the valley there can be no 
doubt that from the jungle of the K‘un-a-t‘ong gorges to 
the beginning of the arid regions at Saung-ta would be no 
more than a day’s march. 
The chief at K‘un-a-t‘ong, a tall broad-chested man 
with a strong pleasant face, obtained three porters for me, 
and the villagers were well satisfied when I paid over 
their wages to him before we set out. This man, who 
was richly dressed and carried a long spear, was a fitting 
counterpart to the beautiful girl I had seen previously ; 
on the other hand, my three temporary porters were 
dwarfish and criminal-looking, bearing little resemblance 
facially to the ordinary Lutzu type. What struck me 
more than anything else, however, was that one of them 
had a distinctly negroid type of countenance, with thick 
lips and flattened bridgeless nose, and instinctively I re- 
called a Tibetan woman in A-tun-tsi who had precisely 
these characteristics developed in the same unmistakable 
way. There can indeed be no question but that amongst 
some of these Tibetan and other tribes a negroid type does 
occasionally crop out, but for the present, at least, | forbear 
to speculate on its origin and significance. All my Lutzu 
porters, both men and women, carried their loads by means 
of a strap made of twisted bamboo strands passing round 
the forehead, a method commonly adopted by dwarfish 
races, as already remarked, and especially by jungle tribes, 
being common, for example, in Borneo; but it is never 
adopted by the Tibetans, who carry their loads on their 
backs by means of shoulder-straps. The Lutzu are not 
indeed dwarfs, but they are distinctly short in stature, and 
we have here another argument in favour of their jungle 
origin. 
We had scarcely started up the valley when the rain 
began again and continued all day. Presently we entered 
the forest, where many of the big trees were covered with 
epiphytic ferns and orchids and draped with moss. Amongst 
the undergrowth dense patches of an Impatiens and the 
