291 
connection with Chinese. No printed books exist, and these MSS. 
deal mainly with religious ritual. The Lolos are little influenced 
ifiee. I picked u 
limited reading some very curious bits of folk-lore. They have 
a very definite - legend of the deluge, one man being saved, whose 
six sons are the ancestors of the present racesof mankind. Before 
the deluge, human beings were cyclopes, ~~ oe of one eye. 
In these olden days, — lived to 500 and 600 years old, &c., &c. 
One would fancy that some Jews or E RAA mie in Yunnan 
in early days. This isa peines province for the Psychical etam A 
as it is peopled with very troublesome ghosts and demons of all 
kinds, which everyone believes in. The Lolo language da tonie, 
and in gyntax is like Chinese, except that v adjective follows 
the noun, whereas in Chinese it comes befor The c composition 
of words is ingeniously simple. gun is “ fire-hit t," gunpowder 
is * fire-rice," a snare is *take-get," a bucket is “two ears pro- 
Jecting," lightning is *the sky winks.” My Lo i has gone home, 
promising to return, but I am a little afraid I shan’t see him 
again, and PW study of Lolo ways for the moment has been 
br acid to a stop. 
o is tke end of China. To the south is Chienhung, a col- 
ER of little Shan States, dependent on China ai the moment, as 
Britain didn’t claim them on taking Burma. The Yunnan plateau 
is still here and goes on ak if one can calla plateau a collection 
of mountains rising to 6,000 feet, with intervening valleys averag- 
ing 4,000—5,000 feet, occasionally "widening out nin plains of a few 
miles in width and le ngth. The mountains are be ang ert: 
by Lolos and Chinese, while the valleys are in he s of t 
Shans, who live by cultivating rice. They are a lazy uam pees 
people, and have none of the industrial virium “of the Chinaman. 
and young priests. The girls 
independent of patari odkial: Other races appear to the sou 
and west, viz., er Akas, who do the hard work for the Shans, 
and the Kaw as, the west, — for scantiness of clothing and 
bloodthirstiness of dispositio 
Whether the ethnology of ze part of the world MES ever be 
satisfactorily eéolaitiéd is doubtful. There seems to be the same 
variety in the human being as exists in the vegetable wol in the 
same region, and there is a strange blending of races of Chinese, 
ered Negrito; perhaps even Caucasian here. 
As much is talked of Yunnan at home, it may he Tus well to say 
that all that talk is full of an astonishing ignoran Yunnan is 
a poor 8 and is impracticable, from INEA reasons, for 
railway schemes. The only possible railway may one con- 
pes the capital Yunnan with Tongking, and it will scarcely 
ever pay. As Yunnan is the foreland, of which pokes and 
the Yangtze valley are the hinterland, it may be necessary for 
Tai it will 
, in fact 
738 A 2 
