364 THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY. [December, 1873. protection to their owner when sleeping in strange places, and left behind him in his path protect him in some degree when pursued. We saw, as I said, men of four separate tribes, three of them distinguished by their mode of wearing their hair, and the southern tribes rather smaller and handsomer than the northern. Those we first met, who had come from Kulel, and are now living on Banbong, called themselves How- longs, and are governed by an old woman, Impanu, the mother of their former chief, Vonpilal, whose grave is on Kulel. The name of the next tribe, those under Poiboi and LjLI Bur, I quite forgot to as¬ certain. The remaining two wero Pois and Paites. The former were inhabitants of the country south of L&l Bur’s, who had apparently hired themselves out as soldiers; and the latter, probably a very small tribe, living on and about Narklang. Of these the two first wore their hair drawn smoothly back, and fastened in a knot behind by a thin bit of iron bent into a double prong. Tlie Pois parted theirs across the head behind, and letting the lower part hang loose drew tho upper forward, twisting it with the front hair, tied it in a knot ever their foreheads, where it was secured by an iron skewer or with a comb of ivory ; round this knob those who wore turbans tied one end in, putting them on after the manner of the Sikhs, which was remarked by some Lushais, who called the 22nd Poi; about a fourth of the Pois wore turbans, the other tribes, as a rule, going bareheaded. The Paites wore their hair frizzed up from their head, and cut about four inches long. Chiefs and head¬ men wear feathers in their hair-knots on groat occasions, that is, those who have them; how the Paites wear thorn, or whether they use any, I do not know. Of the Suktis, who live to the eastward, we saw next to nothing; they are at enmity with theBO other tribes, and, thinking to take them at a disadvantage, had, just before we reached the Champhai, made an attack on L&l Bur's village of Chouchim, whence they had been repulsed with loss, leaving one body behind. This unfortunate’s head and some limbs had been placed as orna¬ ments to Yonolel’s tomb in Lungvel, but as it had been scalped, gouged, and the skull smashed in» little could be made out from it. There are two things remarkable about these people—one, their indifference to ornaments ; ex¬ cepting two, which are very simple, they wear none: these are a tiger’s tooth or tuft of goat’s hair tied with a string round the neck, and a small tuft of scarlet feathers stuck in, or an amber bead hung by a string to tho ear. Some of the children wore strings of beads, but very few of the men; and coloured chintz was scoffed at as a barter, though anything might be got for plain red or white; silver and gold have they none, and care- little for, a few pice re-purchasing a rupee; but these are at a premium merely because they can be beaten into bullets or used to line pipes. The second is that, though not particularly cleanly, they are entirely free from any of those noisome skin diseases which are so common in Kachar, and only one man did we see marked with 6mall-pox. We saw no dwarfs or cripples; probably they are made away with early, after the Spartan fashion. Of the mental and other qualities of the Lu¬ shais, as far as one could judge, they are quick¬ tempered, unstable in mind, loose in allegiance, thieving, and occasionally given to drunkenness, violence, and barbarity ; inquisitive, taciturn in con¬ versation, patriotic, and too bold to be liars; their bump of locality must be strongly marked ; they are great hunters and athletic, walking long distances,, and climbing with relnarkable ease. From the smallest children they all smoke,—men and women, —and so much are they given to it that any of their recent camps can always be detected by their stale tobacco smell. Their pipes are neatly made of bamboo lined with iron or copper, and of the ordi¬ nary pipe shape for the men, those used by the women having a receptacle for water, after the fashion of a hubble-bubble, which water—disgust¬ ing practice!—is carried about by the men in little gourd bottles to take occasional nips from. They have some sort of religious belief, but I heard no mention of priest, nor were there any tem¬ ples or images. Occasionally, in the field we met with a little cleared space on which were arranged rows of clay pallets of various shapes, with a yard- long flagstaff and coloured pendent waving over them, but it was in their tombs that we saw the greatest evidences of their religion. These were always in their villages and ornamented with tro¬ phies of skulls of animals and feathers. At burials they discharge firearms over the graves, and I believe slay the animals, whose heads afterwards go t o their decoration, and whose spirits are intended for the delectation of tho grave’s occupant in the happy hunting-ground. The greater the man the more animals are sent with him, and it is said that slaves are sometimes sacrificed and buried with a chief. Vonolel’s and Yonpilal’s tombs had the heads of many beasts over them (indeed one got a knowledge of the larger fauna of the country at a glance); the skulls of the most dangerous wero muzzled, and there were hobbles to restrain the feet. Beyond what can be gathered from what I have mentioned,—that they must believe in a future state, and that there is some invisible power for evil, against whom they make their incantations to
