ABORS AND GALONGS. 103 



to the indifferent manner in which he may have been served by his translator. 

 His description of this neighbourhood as recorded by the Survey of India l might 

 have come out of Baedeker (had that authority been so adventurous) and he 

 is borne out in other ways by local information. Pangodudung, Korbo and Mayum 

 have all been identified. Satong did exist 30 years ago, but has now disappeared. 

 Jido and Ngamying we know were founded rather less than 30 years ago, which 

 accounts for Kinthup's failure to notice them between 1882 and 1884. 



After negociating the flimsy cane bridge over the Pemasiri we ascended the hill, June 29th. 

 and camped short of Yortong, the crest of the ridge being between us and the village. 

 Sheep were grazing on the hillside, and Membas, both men and women, were working 

 in the fields. Like the Abors the men wear daos but they differ from their wilder 

 neighbours in having such special agricultural implements as short-handled axes, 

 mattocks and large pruning hooks. I saw the women with these sickles at their 

 girdles. Broad-cast cultivation and a reliance upon a hardened bamboo splinter 

 or pointed stick compares unfavourably with wet-rice cultivation, and high farming 

 generally. Talking of high farming 5500 feet (the Abor limit, with the rarest excep- 

 tions) is not an unusual height for Memba cultivation. Fowls and eggs here are 

 really large, like home ones : the Membas milk their cattle, and make curdled milk.* 

 Cows are driven into pens to prevent them from kicking while they are being milked. 

 The Membas snuff, and that imported from Khong-bo is quite good. I like their 

 polished horn mulls, but so do they and I doubt if I get one to take away with me. 



Halted at Yortong. It seems that Cf Mimat" is the Abor name for the people June 30th. 

 of Khong-bo, which kills the legend of cave dwellers and neckless savages, although 

 the origin of the first may be found in the cave ' ' rest houses ' ' that they lodge 

 in on their way over the passes, and the abnormal goitre met with in the upper 

 valley may account for the second. An Abor seeing Tibetan or Lepcha obsequies 

 for the first time might pardonably mistake the ceremony for cannibal prepara- 

 tions. 3 There are no villages up the trade routes into Tibet, once the main valleys 

 of the Siyom affluents, and the Tsanpo, are left behind. The one still unvisited 

 tribe in the Dihang water-shed, the Boka, neighbours of the Boris of the Upper Siyom, 

 are hardly likely to combine in their habits and appearance the interesting features 

 that figured in the travellers' tales, — 



of the cannibals that each other eat, 

 The anthropophagi and men whose heads 

 Do grow beneath their shoulders. 



1 The account given by Colonel Waddell in " Among the Himalayas" of Kinthup's travels would seem to make 

 no distinction between the Membas and the Abors. The explorer was admittedly sold as a slave in the Memba country, 

 but the inhabitants are not a " fierce savage " people neither do they " kill the Tibetans on principle." Nor has the 

 reputation for ferocity of the Abors of the Dihang valley been altogether established either by onfalls among themselves 

 or by exploits against a foreign adversary, it has been favoured by circumstances and fostered by bluff. The trucu- 

 lence of the Boris, Boka and Galongs of the Upper Siyom has a better foundation of fact. 



1 See " Journey to Lhasa ", foot-note to p. 36. 



3 The legend has at least the merit of age. It is noted as a Mongolian custom by Carpini in 1245 and definitely 

 attributed to the Tibetans by the Fransiscan monk William de Rubruquis who flourished in the same century. (" Trans- 

 Himalaya," Sven Hedin). 



