176 THE HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS OF KWEICHOW 



I have compared as carefully as I could with pages of MS. 

 published by Colborne Baker in 1882, belonging to Lolo 

 tribes, and find no correspondence between them. But I 

 had the good fortune, when I was at Swatow a couple of 

 months later, to be able to submit this book and some 

 leaves of an even earlier period to a learned Chinese scholar, 

 who was greatly interested to see them. He took them in 

 his hands with devout reverence and care, as if they were 

 of priceless value. He said that he had seen this kind of 

 thing before, but it was extremely rare and valuable. He 

 told me exactly where it came from, and when I asked if 

 it were some hundreds of years old, he said "much older 

 than that" (referring to the separate leaves, which my 

 friend had generously given me out of a number collected 

 in a hide-bound volume). With regard to the language, he 

 said that some of the characters were the same as the 

 Chinese script of three thousand years ago, pointing out the 

 character for the moon as an evidence of this. 



To return to the I-Chias and their customs. They 

 appear to be on much the same level morally as the 

 neighbouring tribes, and have big carouses at times on the 

 open mountain slopes. A man desirous to enter into relation- 

 ship with a girl will watch his opportunity for seeing her 

 alone and giving as a signal a wide sweeping movement of 

 the arm : if she acquiesces she will go> to the carouse. The 

 carouses do not take place at stated intervals, but a party 

 of young men will go* off with the girls in groups of twenty 

 or thirty, and sit round a big fire, singing their amorous 

 ditties. Behind them lie a goodly store of weapons in case 

 the parents of other friends of the girls should attack them. 

 In such a case if the attacking party prove successful, the 

 revellers would be stripped naked. 



The custom of the Little Flowery Miao is somewhat 

 similar. Twice a year the men make music outside the 

 houses where the girls live, and those who please go with 

 them to the hills for a carouse. Once a year the men choose 

 their girls, and the other time the girls choose their men. 

 The girls usually marry about fifteen or sixteen, and if they 

 happen to be poor they go* to< the mother-in-law's house very 

 young. The I-chias are extraordinarily fond o<f having law- 

 suits, especially about daughters-in-law. 



Our kind hostesses, Miss Babe and Miss Welzel have 

 got an extraordinarily intimate knowledge of these people 

 due to their care for them in health and in sickness, a know- 

 ledge which can only be obtained by visiting them in their 

 lonely mountain fastnesses, over break-neck passes and per- 

 pendicular paths. As Consul Bourne very justly remarks 



