130 Dwellings, works of art, laws, &c. of the Karens. [No. 3, 



dogs after them, and become an easy prey to the hnnter. When they 

 start anything, they go yelping after it all day, so that a Karen has 

 only to follow on, and he is snre of his game m the end They will 

 follow a large snake that the Karens eat, as readily as a deer, bnt they 

 will not attack it. Tiger cats, palm cats, and civet cats they attack 

 and kill. They fear nothing, excepting tigers and leopards. It they 

 come on a tiger's track, they run back. 



Cats are not domesticated by the Karens, for they say, We cannot 

 eat them, while they devour the rats we wish to eat ourselves." 



Fowls are raised almost universally. Most of them appear to he 

 the common domestic fowl, but a few are the Burmese domestic race 

 of the wild jungle fowl ; and a few are met, in the southern districts, 

 with the membrane that covers the bones black, or nearly so, Gallw 

 Morio, Temm. It is not found among the northern Karens. 



Government. 

 55-56 The government of the Karens may he compared to that of 

 the American Indians at present, or to that of the Scottish clans m the 

 days of Rob Roy. As a whole, they are ungoverned and ungovernable. 

 The Pakus are the hereditary enemies of the Pwos, the Bghais of the 

 Pakus, the Gaikhos of the Bghais, and the Red Karens of all Then 

 there is not a village, perhaps, without an unsettled feud with some 

 other village. Their districts are ill-defined, and they quarrel and 

 fight, like civilized people, over a few roods of land. 



If a man is devoured by a tiger, while on a journey, the price of 

 his life is demanded by his relatives of his companion who mvited him 

 to take the journey, and they constitute themselves both judge, 

 jury and executive. Should any one innocently introduce small-pox, 

 or cholera, or be supposed to introduce it, or any other disease into a 

 village all the deaths are charged to him ; and if he has not property 

 to pav the debt remains for his children or grandchildren to liquidate 

 Each village, with its scant domain, is an independent state, and 

 every chief a prince ; but now and then, a little Napoleon arises, who 

 subdues a kingdom to himself, and builds up an empire. The dynas- 

 ties, however, last only with the controlling mind. 



Before the country was occupied by the English, Lai-quai, a Bghai 

 chief, ruled all the Bghais, and Gaikhos north of Tonngoo. He waged 

 war at will with his subjects on the neighbouring tribes ; and by 





