Through the Lutzu Country to Men-kong 93 
The most extraordinary change observable in the Lutzu 
tribe, however, was not in their houses, but in their persons. 
Their tangled hair, cut in a short fringe across the forehead, 
hung matted over back and shoulders; the men and women 
were in Tibetan dress though they wore no boots and little 
jewellery, but the girls wore the skins of goats or precipice 
sheep sewn together into a sort of sleeveless overall with 
the hair inside, and the children went about naked. They 
were, without exception, the filthiest people I have ever 
come across, and had not the excuse of climate for their 
marked aversion to water. Their complexions were darker, 
and their features, instead of being more Mongolian, were, if 
anything, more negritoid than those of their relations down 
the river. Their vessels are of bamboo and pottery, they 
weave hemp, till the fields, and fish. Barley, maize, and 
hemp are grown, besides pomegranates and prickly pears. 
Cattle and chickens were the only domestic animals I 
noticed, and we were able to buy eggs, milk, and butter. 
Wooden rosaries are commonly worn by the men, metal 
bangles and ear-rings by the women; the men frequently 
wear one ear-ring only, in the left ear. There were a few 
priests in the village, both men and women, with closely 
shaven head, but we saw no religious ceremonies performed. 
They had a curious habit of smelling anything new at the 
very outset of their examination of it—my clothes, a piece 
of canvas, even a piece of silver paper, were all smelt 
critically, which suggests at once that they must possess a 
keen and discriminating sense of smell. The general un- 
couthness of these people must be ascribed to a variety of 
causes, amongst which the impossibility of cultivating rice, 
their isolation from all but the scattered Tibetan settle- 
ments higher up the river, and the change of climate, are 
no doubt important. But undoubtedly the chief cause of 
divergence is a negative one, namely the absence of Chinese 
influence. 
The Chinaman unconsciously influences those tribes 
with whom he comes in contact—excepting always the 
Tibetans—so that they gradually lay aside their more 
barbarous habits. The Lutzus on the borders of the arid 
region may not perhaps precisely resemble the original 
tribe who came, as I believe, from the jungles in the west, 
