418 OCCASIONAL NOTES. 
united them once more under a single sovereign, but this time 
in the person of Queen Victoria. The Anamites who occupy 
the eastern shores are claimed also, though with more doubt- 
ful realization, to be under the one dominion, whether as 
sovereignty or protectorate, of the French Republic. Between 
these two are the great Siam race, whose settlements, spread 
with intervals from the banks of the Brahmaputra to the coasts 
ofthe Malay Peninsula, and down the Mekong, nearly to the 
delta, are divided: under an infinity of petty princes, and 
claimed as tributaries by a variety of sovereign governments ; 
everywhere displaying a fair amount of civilization, though in 
decay, everywhere possessed of letters, everywhere, except in 
Assam (which they first entered in the thirteenth century), 
followers of Buddha, and everywhere speaking substantially 
the same language. Siam is now the only independent State 
of the race. The Talaings, the Khmer, the T'siam, have been 
famous in their day; but they are now shrunken and decayed, 
and are being gradually absorbed by races of greater vitality. 
The chief nationalities that we have named have played in 
the history of Indo-China the part which England, France, 
Germany, and Spain, have played on the Continent of Europe. 
Most of them have stood forth under considerable monarchies 
for more than a thousand years, some of them much more. 
All their countries have in turn (some, such as Burma, again 
and again) been the seat cf conquering empires, extending 
their grasp, in some instances, almost from sea to sea ; and all 
in turn have been the subjects of vast disaster. But besides 
these more prominent races, there are many of inferior im- 
portance, whom we generally characterize as ‘ wild tribes.7 
Some of them are inferior to the ‘ civilized races, on whom 
they border, only in the absence of a written language; whilst 
others are head-hunters in a low depth of savagery. Some are 
as elaborate in tne culture of their rice-terraces as the Chinese ; 
others migrate in the forest from site to site, burning down at 
each remove new areas of jungle, on which to carry out their 
rude hand-husbandry. 
Among these ‘uncivilized’ tribes, none are more worthy 
of note and interest than those known conjointly as Karens, 
