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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



MILITARY POLICE TAKING A BURMESE 

 DACOIT TO HIS EXECUTION 



gathered about the body, forms a sort of 

 skirt very like the well-known Malayan 

 sarong. Men and women wear a clean 

 loose linen jacket, and the men a gaudy 

 silk handkerchief on their head. All 

 smoke, and the "whacking white cheroot" 

 of Kipling is simply a cylinder of rolled 

 palm spath enclosing a quantity of ground- 

 up pith and tobacco mixed — about the 

 poorest treat I have ever tried At pres- 

 ent the rather apathetic Burmese is going 

 to the wall before the wave of migration 

 from Hindustan. One cannot but hope, 



however, that he may be granted strength 

 to prove the fittest to survive in his own 

 land. 



Next to the Burmese themselves, the 

 most important people in Lower and 

 Middle Burma are the various races 

 which are grouped together under the 

 generic name of Karen. These forest 

 folk have come into special prominence 

 because of the ease with which they 

 have, many of them, been converted to 

 Christianity. They have never been 

 Buddhists, but have worshiped as a sim- 

 ple animistic cult. As Scott O'Connor, in 

 "The Silken East," has said: "In the 

 modern history of Christianity there is 

 no more interesting episode than the con- 

 version of the Karen. Prepared by 

 prophecies current among them and by 

 curious traditions of a biblical flavor, 

 they embraced with fervor the new 

 creed brought to them by the missionaries 

 and there are today upwards of a hundred 

 thousand Christian Karen in Burma." 

 The photograph shows a couple of these 

 folk who have come from the forests to 

 Toungoo to make purchases for them- 

 selves and to see the railway. 



Another important people are the Shan. 

 Living as they do largely in the various 

 Shan states, they are under the sover- 

 eignty of Britain, Siam, and China. 

 They have split up into a number of 

 tribes with distinct manners and customs. 

 They wander about a good deal, and it is 

 not unusual to see a party of Shans, in 

 their quilted clothing and wearing big , 

 flapping straw hats, at the bazaar in Man- 

 dalay. 



The Kachins, another fierce wild tribe, 

 live in the hills along the border of the 

 Chinese province of Yunnan. At first 

 they are said to have been a peaceful, 

 quiet folk, but persecutions which took 

 place under the regime of the former 

 kings of LTpper Burma made of them a 

 truculent and predatory people who were 

 never conquered by the Burmese. The 

 English have won them over to a great 

 extent, and today the Kachin military 

 police of Bhamo are one of the most in- 

 teresting bodies in the heterogeneous In- 

 dian army. 



