210 Notes on the Heumd or " Shendoos." [No. 3. 



Commerce, with this wild people is of course extremely limited ; 

 their imports are passed from village to village, few of the more civiliz- 

 ed people of neighbouring countries caring to pass far into the interior 

 of a race which they look on with such dread. Lebbey informed me, 

 the people of his class, took annually to the Koon frontier, elephants' 

 tusks, gongs, [which they get from the province of Yeo in Burmah], 

 bee's wax, home spun plaids, and cotton turban cloths ; which they 

 exchange for salt, muskets, cloth, coral and bead necklaces, lead, 

 powder, brass kutoras and thalees, and brass rings. I was curious to 

 know where they got the brass from, which adorns their shields, but 

 could get no information more lucid than that it came from a country, 

 one moon's journey to the N. or N. N. W. which was governed by a 

 woman ! 



Their weapons are bows and arrows, [small, and becoming fast 

 superseded by muskets,] short spears, and shields made of buffalo hide 

 ornamented with brass plates and tufts of goat's hair dyed scarlet. 



These people are polygamous, having from 2 to 4 wives each ; the 

 number being solely limited by the length of the purse. They pur- 

 chase them from their parents with gongs, cloth, &c. the largest price 

 being paid for the first wife and less for those subsequently added to 

 the household. 



They may marry two sisters at once, but not more, and unlike their 

 southern neighbours, the Koomwees, are prohibited from taking to wife 

 their step-mothers. Daughters are entirely excluded from succession 

 to property, every thing goes to the eldest son. If he be a minor the 

 uncle, or if there be none, some one next of kin, takes charge of the 

 property, which, however, he is not called on to account for afterwards 

 unless he choose ! If the eldest son have married and settled in life 

 at his father's death, he gets no property, and the whole of it is divid- 

 ed amongst his younger brethren. Should there be none however, he 

 succeeds to it. In no case is anything left to the widows ; they are 

 turned adrift, or left to the charity of the eldest son. They bury their 

 dead, digging a hole in the ground to the depth of a man's height, 

 which is paved with flag-stones and lined with boards, into this the 

 corpse is placed in a supine posture, head to the east, together with 

 the deceased's weapons, gong, &c. The hole is then covered with 

 strong sticks, plants, earth, and over all, a large stone. 



