1859.] Itinerary in the district of Amherst, Tenasserim. 429 



This spot ended our voyage. The river is navigable further up 

 for such boats as ours : but so many rapids occur that progress is 

 very tedious. Our journey onwards is by land on elephants, of 

 which we found a considerable assemblage, with their motley wild- 

 looking drivers, all Karens from neighbouring settlements. 



When young, these people are by no means bad looking. Some boys 

 we remarked amongst them to-day were quite pretty, but the Mon- 

 golian roundness of their faces, which in youth gives an innocent 

 and pleasing air, imparts an inane heavy expression in after years. 

 And the filthy practice of chewing pawn is carried by them (from 

 the earliest age) to such an extent, as to be absolutely odious. Few 

 reach maturity with more than blackened stumps instead of teeth 

 in their gums (from the corrosive nature of the lime mixed with 

 the pawn) and at all hours, at all ages, and with both sexes, the 

 reddened saliva may be seen running out of their disfigured lips, or 

 discharged in incredible quantities from their mouths. The teeth 

 become at first permanently red, and by the age of twenty perma- 

 nently black, so that the prettiest girl of the tribe when she smiles 

 is changed into a very gorgon. All of them, big and little were 

 furnished with pipes, made out of the curved roots of bamboos with 

 a reed mouth-piece ; and when not chewing pawn, they were smok- 

 ing these. The tobacco they use is grown by themselves on the 

 river banks, and is mild and rather flavourless ; but they preferred 

 it to my " honey dew" and "solace." 



The dress of the Karens consists of a long night-shirt looking 



O CD O 



garment, into the loose sleeves of which both arms or only one (as 

 convenient) can be thrust. The hair they wear long, and bound 

 into a knot on the top of the head, perhaps a little on one side to 

 look rakish. Over the shoulder is hung their invariable travelling 

 bag of stout cotton cloth, white, red, or striped. And in the hand 

 is generally carried the da (an awkward lumbering implement half 

 knife, half chopper) which like the Lepchas of Sikkim, the Niwars 

 of Nepal, or the Bhotias of Tibet, they apply to all imaginable uses. 

 A few of them, wear large mis-shapen turbans, and one man a 

 Saukay, or patriarch, was dressed out in a Burmese shaped engee 

 (a short shirt coat) of good English superfine blue broad cloth, 

 garnished with the name, in gold letters, of the firm whence it had 



3 K 



