Some of the lads, while in the monastery, learn the first rules of arithmetic, others medicine, some the sacred books, and all the rules of manners. In this latter respect our English board schools might well take a lesson from the rules of the Buddhist monasteries. The rules of etiquette are called Sekiya-wat, and include the adjustment of their robes; walking and sitting in a graceful and becoming manner; how to sit and rise up decently; the attitude of body and mind in which they are to partake their food; behaviour to their superiors and inferiors, and to the pagodas and images; how to behave themselves when begging, and when in the presence of the laity, especially in that of the fair sex. CHAPTER XXV. LEAVE ZIMMÉ WITHOUT INTERPRETERS—BORROW A TENT—REACH BAN PANG KAI—THE CRY OF GIBBONS—LEGEND—A PRIMITIVE PAGODA—THREE KINDS OF PAGODAS—DESCRIPTION—LOW PLATEAU DIVIDING MEH LOW FROM MEH WUNG—BRANCH RAILWAY FROM LAKON—THE HEAD SOURCES OF MEH WUNG—A STORM—TEAK—REACH MUANG WUNG—COCKLE’S PILLS—A TEMPLE AT NIGHT—TOWER MUSKETS—A PLAGUE OF FLIES—MOOSURS—DR CUSHING LEAVES FOR BANGKOK—HIS EXCELLENT ARRANGEMENT—TRANSLATOR OF THE BIBLE INTO SHAN—LOSS OF SHAN INTERPRETERS—MR MARTIN JOINS PARTY—BAU LAWAS IN SOUTHERN SIAM—ARRIVAL OF MR GOULD—ELEPHANT TITLES—DINNER AT THE MARTINS’—A PRESENT OF CIGARS. After being detained five days at Zimmé in the hopes of one of the missionaries being able to accompany me to the sources of the Meh Wung, the Princess Chow Oo Boon kindly hired me some of her elephants, and I started on the morning of April 26th, without interpreters, accompanied merely by the elephant-men and my own servants. Natives of India have an astonishing power of quickly learning sufficient words and sentences of a strange language to allow them to express themselves more or less fluently to the people of the country. As Jewan, Veyloo, and Loogalay were not exceptions to the rule, and I had acquired some little knowledge of the language, I thought we should be able to manage very well. As the rains had set in, and we might expect showers every night, I borrowed a good-sized bell-tent from one of the missionaries, which, on a pinch, would contain myself and two of the servants; while the other one could curl himself up in an elephant-howdah, and shelter himself beneath its cover. I followed the route which was taken by M‘Leod in 1837, when on his way from Zimmé to Kiang Tung, as far as Ban Pang Kai, a village 9 miles to the south of Viang Pa Pow, which we had visited when proceeding to Kiang Hai. The height of the pass over the divide between the Meh Hkuang and the Meh Low crossed by the route is 3413 feet above the sea.