The next morning I watched the people streaming over the ford on their way to market, and was amused to see the terror expressed in the faces of the women as they passed our _sala_, and were horrified at the sight of our Madras boys. Group after group screamed with fright, and scurried by as fast as they could go. Those who looked back were further scared by the hideous grimaces the three scamps made at them. The women must have taken the boys for yaks, or ogres: they had evidently never seen black men before. [Illustration: _Fishing implements used in Siam._ ] It is the habit of every one in the Shan States to proceed in single file, and the same rule is followed by the elephants and caravan animals. For some time in the early morning the procession of people and animals on their way to the city was continuous. Gaily dressed Burmese Shans, carrying their shoulder-bamboos, passed by, and were often accompanied by their women, who were dressed in beautiful embroidered skirts, loose blue spencers, and steeple-crowned broad-brimmed hats of plaited straw, or else of palm-leaf, similar to those worn by the men, and separated from the crown of their head by a pad, and fastened under the chin by a string. Then would come a string of fisher men and women from the great staked fishing-dam that has been erected across the river a little above the ford. These would be followed by market-women, long caravans of laden oxen, mules, and ponies; and lastly, by some elephants. The market-women, having just crossed the ford, were short-kilted, and, as is usual with the Zimmé Shans, the unmarried women were guiltless of clothing above the waist. [Illustration: _Fishing implements used in Siam._ ] The prices in the market would make the mouths of our stay-at-home people water: large fowls, twopence each; large ducks, fourpence; rice, three pounds a penny; fresh fish, a halfpenny a pound; and sugar, a penny a pound. A company of Yunnan Chinese with a caravan of twenty-six ponies camped close to our rest-house. The head-man told me that they had brought with them silk thread, straw hats, and copper pans, and had come from Nah Hseh (Yunnan Fu). Altogether, they would be six months absent, but two months of that time would be spent in selling their goods, in purchasing salt, betel-nut, &c., for sale and barter amongst the Karens, and in bartering for and purchasing the cotton they intended to carry back with them. The journey from Kiang Hai to Yunnan Fu takes them six weeks.