220 THE BOTANY OF THE KACHIN HILLS NORTH-EAST OF MYITKYINA. 
again till the last trace of opium has disappeared. The smoke is 
drawn through water as in a hookah. These details are given because 
an impression has got abroad that the cloth itself is actually smoked. 
Pea is indigenous and was met with wild in the forest in various 
places, as at Lamrauk and elsewhere ; it more resembles the Assam 
plant than the Chinese. At one or two villages a few bushes, as 
has already been indicated, were found planted, but no attempt is 
made to cure the leaves ; these are picked green and boiled as 
required. 
The castor-oil plant was found cultivated in villages near the 
British, and again near the Chinese, frontier, but was not met with 
ici the more remote ones. The people grow the plant in order to 
express the oil from its seeds, though they only use this for burning 
and are quite unaware of its medicinal properties. In the upper 
valleys the people have no lamps and seem to have no idea of using 
any kind of oil, either for burning or for cooking. 
A powerful spirit is distilled from rice, and several kinds of beer 
are brewed. The most usual beer, made from rice, varied wif^i 
each brew and tasted somewhat like perry or cider ; it is acceptable 
when one is thirsty, though the taste is usually rather mawkish. In 
the beers made from Setaria and Eleusine^ and in the Kachin Hills 
it seems to be the former that is usually employed, the grain is left 
in the fermented liquor, so that the result is a thin gruel of an unin- ", 
vitiog appearance. It proves, however, to be a pleasant pick-me- 
up, without being at all ‘ heady’ if drunk when one is heated and 
fatigued ; it serves indeed to some extent as a food as well as a 
drink. Yet another beer is made from maize, but this was only met 
with among the Yawyins, though it is said to be prepared by other 
tribes also. This has a very pleasant flavour, but is strong and * heady,* 
All these liquors have a tendency to provoke rather than to allay 
thirst. In passing through a Maru village a malodorous substance of 
a dark-brown colour was seen drying on trays in the sun. This was 
found on enquiry to be the substance employed in fermenting these 
beers; it was said to be the product of the root of a particular tree, 
of which unfortunately no specimens could be obtained. 
* 'Jbe Seit ” palm was fairly common, especially in the tract 
between Kwitu and the Tumpang Kha ; its long pendulous clusters 
of fruits, which look like great chains of large beads, render it a very 
conspicuous object.* When bamboos are scarce, the rind of its stem 
• From Lieutenant Pottinger’s description this is evidently a Catyota ; indeed, on 
being shown C, urens and C, mitis in the Botanic Garden on his return, 
Lieutenant Pottinger at once decided that it must be very nearly related to these 
species, especially to the former, of which it has all the habits, though the pinnules 
of the leaves differ. Possibly it is Catyota obtusa Griff., originally obtained in the 
not far distant Mishmi Hills.-— Z?. P, 
