Many Europeans, travelers and missionaries, have been murdered in the country inhabited by the independent Lolo people.  Although I have not personally been through any of that country, I have been on the very outskirts and have lived for a long time among the people there.  I found them a pleasant hospitable race, fairly easy to get on with.  And it must not be averred that, because they consider their natural enemy, the Chinese, the man to be robbed and murdered, and because they kill off their fellow-landlords in order the more quickly to get rich, that they treat all strangers alike.  Among the Europeans who have suffered death at their hands, it is probable that in some way the cause was traceable to their own bearing towards the people—­either a total lack of knowledge of their language or an attitude which caused suspicion.

Among the Nou-su, strong as this feudal life still is, the Chinese are fast gaining permanent influence.  Their dissolute and drunken and inhuman daily practices are tending to work out among this people their own destruction, and in years to come in this neighborhood the traveler will be perplexed at finding here and there a fine specimen of an upstanding Chinese, with clean-cut face, straight of feature and straight of limb, with a peculiar Mongol look about him.  He will be one of the surviving specimens of a race of people, the Nou-su, whose forgotten historical records would do much to clear up the doubt attaching to Indo-China and Tibet-Burma ethnology.

The first Nou-su chieftain to come to Chao-t’ong, a man who was renowned as a tryannical brute, was one Ien Tsang-fu, who frequently gouged out the eyes of those who disobeyed his commands; and his descendants are said to have inherited a good many of this tyrant’s vices.  The landlords prey upon their weaker brethren, and at last, with infinite sagacity, the Chinese Government steps in to stop the quarrels, confiscates the whole of the property, and thus reduces the Nou-su land to immediate control of Chinese authorities.

“The Nou-su are, of course, entirely dependent upon the land for their living.  They till the soil and rear cattle, and the greatest calamity that can come upon any family is that their land shall be taken from them.  To be landless involves degradation as well as poverty, and very severe hardship is the lot of men who have been deprived of this means of subsistence.  For those who own no land, but who are merely tenants of the Tu-muh,[S] there seems to be no security of tenure; but still, if the wishes and demands of the landlords are complied with, one family may till the same farm for many successive generations.  The terms on which land is held are peculiar.  The rental agreed upon is nominal.  Large tracts of country are rented for a pig or a sheep or a fowl, with a little corn per year.  Beside this nominal rent, the landlord has the right to make levies on his tenants on all special occasions, such as funerals, weddings, or for any other extraordinary