After dinner we called up the head-men of the village, and took their vocabulary. To show the utter difference between their language and that of the Bau Lawas, I may mention that fire, water, fish, and pig in Bau Lawa are—_ngau_, _raowm_, _ka_, and _layt_; whilst in Kiang Tung Lawa they are—_bee_, _hlang_, _laung-teh_, and _wa_. The Lawas said that nearly every year some of their kinsmen from the neighbourhood of Kiang Tung paid them a visit, and that their forefathers were immigrants from the north, and not natives of the Zimmé State. These people have not such pronounced oval faces as the Lolos in Ssuchuan (although probably of the same race) or the La-hu near Kiang Hai, and at first sight I took them for Burmese Shans. They have, however, better developed noses than the Shans, and some of their women might be taken for handsome gipsies. Next day we started before the morning mist had been dissipated, and passed through the fields of Ban Pa Bong. The spurs on either side of us were rapidly retreating, and we were now well into the old lake-basin. At the village the plain was three miles broad, and it quickly expanded to six and seven miles, the hills on either side being frequently lost in the haze. The small trees and bushes were spangled with the large pale-blue flowers of a creeper; and white convolvulus, jessamine, and the yellow blossoms of a vine-leaved creeper were frequently seen. Near Pa Bong we met fifty-three laden cattle, accompanied by a party of Burmese Shans wearing blue trousers and jackets, and great straw hats atop of the silk handkerchiefs which were twined round their top-knots. All the oxen wore nose-bags made of rattan-cane, to prevent them from browsing by the way; and the leaders wore a mask in front of their faces, fancifully worked with cowrie-shells, and topped by a beautiful peacock’s tail. This, of course, was to make the animals hideous, in order to frighten the demons away. Besides the ordinary brass sleigh-bells that are hung round the necks of the oxen, a large bell was suspended from a frame above the leader’s head. The bells are useful for letting the elephant-drivers and other caravans know of their approach, and to enable the caravan-men to track the animals when they are grazing at a halting-place. The morning was pleasant, and the country very beautiful, and made even more so by the mist rising and falling as it lifted from the plain and was swept from the valleys by the morning breeze. The great variety of trees in the portions of the plain that were not under cultivation, and the constant recurrence of trees out of and in leaf, was a source of continual surprise. The same class of trees were in full leaf in one place where the soil was rich, and had dropped their leaves at a place close by where the soil indicated a laterite formation.