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hair, were ushered in by the chuprassi. Both of them put their right hands up with the palm over the ear. This was their notion of a British salute, and did not mean that they were hard of hearing or had earache.

Captain Kirkwood recognised the first of them immediately. "Hallo, duwa, what's brought you here? I haven't been able to get up to your village for a long time now. We're very busy. Any serao about now? or sambhur? I should like to come up again for another shoot, but it can't be done just now.'

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"I do not know about the deer, thakin. It is not that. We have heard that you have a war, that the Great Royal Government is punishing some disorderly Germans. That is why we have come."

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Captain Kirkwood checked himself in an inolination to laugh. "What? You haven't come to enlist, have you? I am afraid there is no room for more men in the Kachin Company. It's full up. In fact there is a good long waiting list, and anyhow there is no chance of service for them, or for me, worse luck. The company won't be moved from here unless there are local troubles."

"It is not that, Great Lord," said the chief eagerly. "But we have heard that the Germans, who are a race of dacoits, thieves, robbers, and murderers, have made a raid into the territory of the Great Lord, and are stealing much property and doing much mischief. We have

some experience in that sort of thing, and therefore we have come to offer arms to the Great Royal Government, so that the Germans may be quickly defeated and exterminated."

"Arms!" said Captain Kirkwood. "Do you mean weapons, or do you mean a band of the young men of your village? We can't take them just now."

"No, Great Lord, but we have heard from Chinese caravans passing along the valley road, the road your Lordship knows very well, that the Germans have great supplies of weapons, and that they have been violently resisting the troops of the Great Royal Government. Therefore we have brought arms to offer to the Great Royal Government through your Lordship. But the people at the frontier fort did not understand. They told us that no one with arms may pass along the roads. We knew that very well, but we put it down to their ignorance of our virtuous intentions. Therefore my subjects have gone back across the frontier, and have taken the guns with them; but the arms are there beyond dispute. Then I and the pawmaing, the little duwa of the village on the northern slope, came with all possible haste to inform your Lordship of our purpose and of the circumstances. Great Lord, to issue orders that the weapons shall be brought along here, so that the Royal Government troops may utterly destroy the Germans.'

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Captain Kirkwood felt in- off with him Ja Taung, a clined to laugh, but he had con- girl who had many lovers in siderable experience of Kachin the village. We went after sensitiveness, so he remarked him, but we lost the tracks and gravely, "That is very patriotic it was not for many weeks of you. But what do you know afterwards that we heard that of the Germans? Have you a he had gone north and had blood-feud with them?" sold Ja Taung as a slave, near the head-waters of the East river. Ja Taung's brother is one of the men who are waiting at the Fort with the guns for the Great Royal Government He wants to go on with his gun himself to fight the Germans and kill Maya. He has three notches on his bamboo staff marked against Maya."

"Have we not a blood-feud? The whole village has a debt against them, and there are many villagers villagers who have special private debts. Does your Lordship know the German Maya (Meier)? You must know him. He stayed at our village shortly after the time when your Lordship came up to inquire into the disturbances which had occurred in the Pumshih village over the closing of the forests and the stopping of the cutting of trees and bamboos. You remember that after you had finished your inquiry you came over the Administrative Line to my place to shoot some of the forest creatures."

"Of course, I remember very well. Was he a short stout man with a yellow moustache, and a knapsack strapped on his back?"

"Yes, he was a man like that, but he was chiefly noted for his bad manners, for the way he took everything and paid for nothing, and for the evil way in which he spoke. Ah, but he was cunning. Just when we had determined to seize him and hand him over to the Royal Government, or to out him down if he resisted," the duwa looked sideways at Kirkwood with something like a smirk on his face, "he disappeared, and he carried

"He kidnapped a girl, did he? But what else did he do? When he asked me for a passport, he said he was studying the history of the Kachins. I remember him now quite well,' said Kirkwood.

"There was nothing that he did not do. He said he was studying all the races of the earth, and he specially wanted to find out about the ancient races on the frontier between China and Burma and their manners and customs. He had a man with him who spoke Chinese, and all the Kachins near the frontier can understand Chinese, so he was able to talk freely. This man of his was a bad man too. He had been a little teacher with the missionary whom your Lordship seized and sent away because he had been selling guns to the Chinese and others. They were not much use these guns, for they were all shovebehind guns, and when the supply of cartridges was done they could not be used any

more, because the people could not load them the way our guns are loaded." "I see. But there was not much harm in asking about the old legends of the Kachins. I often do that myself, and you have not got a blood-feud against me, have you?"

"It was the way he did it," said the duwa excitedly. "He was very insulting to the spirit men. He laughed at their stories and never took the trouble to write them down, whereas your Lordship always listens and makes notes in a book and very often says he has heard something of the same kind in other villages. But besides that, he was always wanting what he called specimens of our clothes, and he never would take old clothes. He always wanted new ones, and especially he wanted embroidered shoulder-bags. Now our women often go and sell these in the bazaar and get money to buy rice. But Maya never paid anything, not even for the food which the little teacher demanded for himself and for his master. I represented to him many times that this was not the Royal Government custom, neither was it the custom of our race. The Burmans used to do it in the Shan villages in the valleys, but even they did not demand to be fed free for more than ten days, and they never came to our villages in the hills. The Burmese were much too afraid of us for that. They were not fond of the hills. But Maya only laughed. He said he did not acknowledge the Great

VOL, CCVII.-NO. MCCLVI.

Royal Government. He belonged to another government which did not trouble itself about paltry things. He said he would give us a large present when he went away. And he talked much with much with Chinese smugglers who came over from Möngmyen to sell salt and buy opium, both of which are very profitable because they are illegal."

"Oh, he did that, did he? He was evidently a mean scoundrel. But what else did he do? How long did he stay? Your village is a fine village, duwa-sixty or seventy houses at least, but it would not take him long to get all the stories he wanted and to buy all the new bags and clean clothes you had."

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Kirkwood was convinced that there was more to be told yet.

"I don't know how long he stayed a month, I should think." The duwa looked testily at his companion. "How "How long did he stay, pawmaing?

The pawmaing hitched up his waist-cloth and began counting on his fingers: "Three times to the Na-lông bazaar he went, he went, and four times to Kutkai bazaar. There are three days between them, and the bazaars are held every five days. He must have been over twenty-four or twenty-five days, because he did not go to Kutkai the first bazaar day, and he missed another because he had drunk too much shiru [millet beer] the night before. Twenty and five-and two or three days

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when he first oame—yes, it must have been twenty-nine or thirty days."

"What on earth did he do all that time? He must have been very fond of your village," said Kirkwood.

"He was always looking about for plants, and told us many times that we did not know the useful things we had in our country. He said he had found some wild teabushes, and he certainly made experiments with wild indigo that the Chinese dye their clothes with. And then he was away for two nights with a Chinese caravan that halted at Na-lông. - and then there was the girl Ja Taung. He brought her presents from the bazaar: Berlin wool and condensed milk and ship tobacco and sardines and lookingglasses. And at night he always talked a great deal. At first he came to my house and sat in the front room with the little teacher, and smoked and drank and said many wicked things. Afterwards he went to other houses, and even to the bachelor huts."

"What do you mean, 'talked many wicked things'?" asked Kirkwood with sudden interest. He had been leaning back in his chair, listening resignedly to the duwa's dissertations. There had been a good deal of talk about unrest over the border in China and on the fringe of Tongking, but he had had no idea that German enterprise had gone so far as to talk sedition among the Kachins.

The headman looked at him queerly, and glanced sideways at the pawmaing, and checked his flow of talk. "I do not think that I should tell your Lordship. Your Lordship

would be angry. But it was not our fault. We did not know what he was saying until the interpreter, the little teacher, told us. Then we could not stop him."

"Go on. Tell me the whole story. It is enough to show that you were not to blame that you have come to see me new. Tell me what it was the German said. You need not be afraid that it will annoy me or disturb me. You are more likely to get praise."

"You must remember, Great Lord, that as I have said before, this Maya always talked to us as if he were speaking to pariah dogs or buffaloes. He was a very rude man. He said always," the duwa hesitated for a moment,-"he said the Great Royal Government was 8 wicked government, and oppressed everybody with cannon that fire from very far away, and balls that break into pieces when they fall, and make as much noise then as when they are fired out of the gun. He said: You Kachins used to be lords of the hills. You used to make the valley people supply you with what you wanted, and they had to pay to be protected. Now the Great Royal Government will not let you fetoh cattle when you need them, from villages which have more than is wanted, and they will not let you sell liquor and opium to

Burmans and Shans. And when you travel across the border they will not let you carry arms with you, you who have carried dhas since you were infants. They treat you just as if you were conquered, and you are not conquered. And they do more than that in the places where they stay and govern the people. They shut up the forests, and say you must not out down trees and sow crops. If you do you will be punished. And when you have a quarrel with somebody who has done you some harm, they say you must not go and attack him, as a rightminded free man ought to do. They say you must go and bring a case in court. Do you know why they do that? It is because they want you to pay court fees. Gradually they will get all your money, and your young men will not know how to fight, and the English, they will come and take your lands just as they have taken the lands of the villages nearer the plains. And then you will all become slaves and will have to do whatever they bid you, and you will have to pay taxes, which is a thing not to be endured by people who have lived here since the mountains began. That is what the English do every where, he said. And that is why some day, he went on to say, perhaps soon, perhaps after a few years, the All-Highest Lord of my country is going to punish them and take their country from them. I know you cannot do much. You are poor wretched oreatures

who do not know how to fight properly, and have not got proper guns, and would not know how to use them if you had them. But if you are wise you will not allow the English Government people to come near you, and when my country people come to turn out the whole crew of them, you will make your petty small attacks on the English. You can't do much, of course. Nobody expects ignorant savages like you to do much, but you will distract the attention of the English and prevent them from sending all their troops against us as they would like to do. They cannot resist properly in any case, and are sure to be all killed. But if you help in your own small way, my king, who is the AllHighest king, will note what you have done, and he will probably let you do a lot of things in the old way as you used to do before the English came. They pretend that they are very powerful, and they did not want to let me come to see you, but they were not able to prevent it, for here I am you see, and out of pure friendliness for you and pity for your grievances I give you this advice. I expect you will worship me as a benefactor when the time comes, and it won't be long of coming. Yes, in a year or two you will declare that I must have been a spirit-child, and you will make a myth of me like Shippawn Ayawng, your first ancestor, according to your old men's tales! That was what this thief of the world said, and a

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