looks like blood on the paths. Besides the sword I
have described, they carry bows and arrows, and rarely
a lance, and a bamboo wicker-work shield.
We found the Khasias to be sulky intractable
fellows, contrasting unpleasantly with the Lepchas.;
wanting in quickness, frankness, and desire to please,
and obtrusively independent in manner; nevertheless
we had a head man who was very much the reverse of
this, and whom we had never any cause to blame.
Their language is, I believe, Indo-Chinese and
monosyllabic: it is disagreeably nasal and guttural,
and there are several dialects and accents in contiguous
villages. All inflections are made by prefixing
syllables, and when using the Hindoo language, the
future is invariably substituted for the past tense.
They count up to a hundred, and estimate distances
by the number of mouthfuls of pawn they eat on the
road.
Education has been attempted by missionaries with
partial success, and the natives are said to have shown
themselves apt scholars. Marriage is a very loose tie
amongst them, and hardly any ceremony attends it.
We were informed that the husband does not take his
wife home, but enters her father’s household, and is
entertained there. Divorce and an exchange of wives is
common, and attended with no disgrace : thus the son
therefore often forgets his father’s name and person
before he grows up, but becomes strongly attached to
his mother. The sister’s son inherits both property
and rank, and the proprietors’ or Rajahs’ offspring are
consequently often reared in poverty and neglect. The
usual toy of the children is the bow and arrow, with
which they are seldom expert; they are said also to
spin pegtops like the English, climb a greased pole,
and run round with a beam turning horizontally on an
upright, to which it is attached by a pivot.
The Khasias eat fowls, and all meat, especially pork,
potatos and vegetables, dried and half-putrid fish in
abundance, but they have an aversion to milk, which is
very remarkable, as a great proportion of their country
is admirably adapted for pasturage. In this respect,
however, they assimilate to the Chinese, and many
Indo-Chinese nations who are indifferent to milk; as
are the Sikkim people: the Bengalees, Hindoos, and
Tibetans, on the other hand, consume immense quantities
of milk. They have no sheep, and few goats or
cattle, the latter of which are kept for slaughter ; they
have, however, plenty of pigs and fowls. Eggs are
most abundant, but used for omens only, and it is a
common, but disgusting occurrence, to see large groups
employed for. hours in breaking them upon stones,
shouting and quarrelling, surrounded by the mixture of
yellow yokes and their red pawn saliva.
The funeral ceremonies are the only ones of any
importance, and are often conducted with barbaric
pomp and expense ; and rude stones of gigantic proportions
ar e erected as monuments, singly or in rows,
circles, or supporting one another, like those of Stonehenge,
which they rival in dimensions and appearance.
The corpse is burned, though seldom during the rains,
from the difficulty of obtaining a fire ; it is therefore
preserved in honey (which is abundant and good) till