August 7, 1885.] 



SCIENCE. 



109 



Pee Ka, or horse-shaped spirits, that I have before 

 alluded to, attach themselves sometimes to one, and 

 at other times to another, of their descendants, who 

 are supposed to have the power of using them as 

 ministers of ill to their neighbors. The belief in 

 these spirits is universal through the Shan state, and 

 is the cause of a vast amount of cruelty and misery. 

 A man falls ill; his malady baffles the skill of the 

 physician; the spirit doctor is called in, and decides 

 that it is a case of witchcraft. The doctor calls the 

 officer of the village and a few others as witnesses. 

 His first question to the invalid is, ' Whose spirit has 

 bewitched you ? ' If no reply is given, the sick 

 person is pinched, or beaten with a cane, until he 

 makes the disclosure. The replies are put down to 

 the witch-ghost, uttered through the mouth of his 

 victim. Other questions are then asked; such as, 

 ' How many buffaloes has he ? ' ' How many pigs ? ' 

 ' How many chickens ? ' ' How much money ? ' 

 The answers to these questions are written down 

 by the scribe. A time is then appointed for meeting at 

 the accused person's house. The same questions are 

 put to him as to his possessions. If his answers agree 

 with those of the sick person, he is condemned, and 

 held responsible for the acts of his ghost. He is 

 ordered to leave the village, has his house unroofed 

 and pulled to pieces, and his garden trees cut down. 

 Witches and wizards, who are thus driven with their 

 families from their homes, are only allowed to resettle 

 in certain places : amongst these are Muang Paow, 

 Muang Ngai, Muang Pai, and Kiang Hsen. There 

 was hardly a village of any size through which we 

 passed that had not one or more houses unroofed, 

 the people of the house having been ousted on this 

 fearful charge. The Pa-pow plain is fast being 

 brought under cultivation by these exiles: it is many 

 miles in length, and of considerable breadth. 



After leaving the plain, we continued along the 

 route Capt. M'Leod took in 1836, as far as Kiang Hai. 

 Here we had to stay a day or two to procure a relay 

 of elephants. At Kiang Hai we met for the first time 

 Moosurs, called so by the Shans, but La-Hoo by 

 themselves. Their faces were of a decided oval, and 

 their Turki aspect bespeaks them of similar type to 

 the Mohammedans of Yunnan. The high position 

 that is allowed to woman amongst the Indo-Chinese 

 was evidenced throughout my journey. Their power 

 and acknowledged rights are well exemplified by the 

 law of divorce amongst the Moo-sur. These people 

 are monogamists. Either can divorce the other at 

 will, on payment to the divorced party of a sum of 

 forty rupees. The woman takes the house, the 

 daughters, two-thirds of the clothing, one-third of 

 the money, and half of the goods. The sons, to- 

 gether with the remainder of the clothing, money, 

 and goods, go to the man. From Ban Meh Kee, a 

 village of two hundred and thirty houses, near the 

 border, we turned eastward, and, passing the remains 

 of the three ancient cities of Manola, proceeded to 

 Kiang Hsen. The remains of the three cities of Ma- 

 nola, each about half a mile in diameter, consisted of 

 a ditch dug round the bottom of knolls, and heaped 

 up to form high parapets on either side. The top of 



the inner ramparts are about forty feet above the 

 bottoms of the ditches, which are about a hundred 

 feet wide. During my various journeys, I passed 

 through, or not far from, and learned the names of, 

 forty-eight such deserted cities. As some of these 

 were upwards of two miles in width, the population 

 of the country at one time must have been large. 

 Many of these cities, however, may have been cities 

 of refuge for the people of the districts in time of 

 invasion, and only partly occupied in times of peace. 

 The Kiang Hsen plain is perhaps the largest and most 

 fertile in the Shan states. It extends for fully a 

 hundred and fifty miles from north to south, and is 

 often many miles in breadth. Teak grows luxuriantly 

 upon the low hills in its neighborhood; and in the 

 forests on the eastern side of the Meh Kong, there are 

 said to be extensive tracts covered by it. The city 

 of Kiang Hsen was re-occupied in 1881. Its former 

 wealth and population must have been great ; as there 

 were fifty-three monasteries within its walls, and 

 many very valuable bronze images of Buddha are 

 scattered about the enclosure. We met large bodies 

 of emigrants proceeding to Kiang Hsen during our 



RUINS AT KIANG HSEN. 



journey to Kiang Hai, and heard from the prince 

 of the place that forty-eight hundred fighting men, 

 with their families and slaves, had been told off 

 from Zimme, Lakhon, Lapoon or Labong, and Peh, 

 to settle in the plain about Kiang Hsen. Most of 

 these are the descendants of the captives who were 

 removed after its surrender in 1797. Keturning to 

 Kiang Hai, we followed the Kiang Hsen plain from 

 the basin of the Meh Low into that of the Meh Ing, 

 and reached the town of Penyow, where small-pox 

 was raging. Here we were detained for some days, 

 waiting for elephants. Leaving the town on the 28th 

 of April, we crossed into the valley of the Meh 

 Ngow, and thence into that of the Meh Wung, on 

 which the important town of Lakhon, which con- 

 tains about ten thousand inhabitants, is situated. 

 Crossing the hills to Lapoon, we arrived at Zimme 

 on the 20th of April, six days after the commence- 

 ment of the rains. My companions and all of our 

 servants were suffering from fever towards the latter 

 end of the journey, and I was glad to get them all 

 safely back into Zimme on the 24th of May. After 

 stopping a week in the town, I left for Bangkok. 



