230 The Last of the Mekong 
the other end, where one would naturally have expected her 
feet to be, peeped the heads of her eldest daughter, a girl 
of about sixteen, and two small children ; a confused lump 
in the middle suggested a tangle of legs, the plank bedstead 
being no longer than bedsteads usually are. 
It fell to the lot of the eldest daughter—who was in the 
exasperating position of being young enough to do the 
house work for her mother and old enough to look after 
her little sisters—to arise first, and having lit the fire, swept 
the floor, fed the pigs, and washed herself, to get hot water 
for everybody else. The mother followed half an hour 
later, but the two small girls having, doubtless for purposes 
of warmth, slept naked, appeared somewhat loth to get up 
under the eye of a white man, even though well screened 
beneath their quilt. Two little heads of towzled hair 
peeped out from cover, and two pairs of large black eyes, 
round with wonder, having stared at me for some time 
looked at each other and laughed slyly. Presently they 
also dexterously slipped on a garment apiece and emerging 
from their end of the quilt, stood shivering in the cold. 
Without waiting for a proper breakfast we set out down 
the ravine, and two hours’ walking brought us at last to 
Lu-k‘ou, a small village boasting a Shan Tussu and a ferry 
across the Salween, a combination which doubtless confers 
on the place more dignity than one would imagine from its 
insignificant appearance, though the yamen and official inn 
are good solid structures with tiled roofs. Even the huts, 
instead of being built of wood, as in the mountains, are 
built of mud bricks and thatched with bamboo matting or 
grass. Chinese influence is conspicuous here; the people 
are almost entirely Shan and Lissu in origin, but Chinese 
in dress and speech. It is not a little curious how Chinese 
influence seems to segregate itself in certain places along 
the trade-routes, leaving the intervening country almost 
untouched, for south of Lu-k‘ou I came across Shans living 
in a state of splendid savagery. 
I had been in the inn only a few minutes when the 
Tussu himself came round to see me, but Sung having 
stupidly failed to inform me who the gentleman was, I very 
naturally mistook him for the Tussu’s servant, and treated 
him with scant courtesy in consequence. It was the more 
