These people wear their hair very long, and it is wound round the top of the head and enclosed in a turban of similar colour and texture to their costume. Like some of the natives of the Laos provinces and the Yunan, the Muongs always wear a sort of puttie, made of blue cotton cloth, which is wound round the leg from ankle to knee. They are expert mountaineers and hunters, and will not hesitate in attacking a tiger or panther with no better weapons than poisoned arrows, or a matchlock gun. The origin of the Annamese or Tonquinese--for they are one and the same race--is very obscure, since they possess no reliable records going back for more than eight centuries, which is considerably posterior to the epoch at which their ancestors must have invaded Indo-China. Some writers declare them to be of Mongolian origin, though this is hardly probable, for, if one can judge by the territory the race actually occupies, they probably came from the south-west. Others have declared them to be a branch of the Malay family. In physique they resemble the Siamese, and are not so sturdy as the Malay. Their skin is of a deep copper colour. They are very small, their average height being about 4 feet 10 inches. Their lower members are strong and well formed, but the bust is long, thin and weak. The everyday costume of the men consists of a kind of jacket and trousers of cotton cloth reaching almost to the ankles, the colour of which is generally a dark brown. The garments of the women are somewhat similar, but over those already mentioned they wear a sort of long stole which falls almost to the feet. Both sexes wear their hair very long; it is rolled up in a strip of silk or cotton cloth, and wound round the head like a turban. Their features are far from pleasing--indeed, one might qualify them as almost repulsive; flat noses with distended nostrils, high, receding foreheads, prominent cheek bones, narrow eyes and an enormous mouth being their principal traits. Their character also presents few good points. That they are intelligent and possess a wonderful power of assimilation there can be no doubt, but these good traits are negatively qualified by the enormous amount of vanity, laziness, cruelty and cunning with which they are gifted. Buddhism and ancestor-worship form the base of their religion, which is as strongly impregnated with Chinese ideas as is their language with words of the same origin, this being the natural result of their conquest by that race in the year 116 B.C., from which epoch to the arrival of the French the kingdom of Tonquin formed a fief of the Celestial Empire. The influence of France in Indo-China dates back to 1585 when a Jesuit Father, Georges de la Mothe, established several missions, homes and schools at different points in the Mekong Delta.