_Hills to the north of the Zimmé plain from the Meh Teng._ ] These _ta-lay-ows_ are frequently placed, suspended from sticks, about the paths leading to a camp, house, or village, so as to entangle any evil spirit and prevent it from proceeding to perpetrate harm. They are generally made of slips of bamboo plaited into an open lattice-work; but where bamboos are not to be had, cane, or even twigs, take their place. After passing two more villages, and a road leading westwards to Muang Keut, distant about a day’s journey on the Meh Teng, I crossed that river near the village of the same name, and halted to sketch the hills and fix their position. The Meh Teng was 70 feet broad, 10 feet deep, and had 2½ feet of water at our crossing, which was distant 21 miles from Zimmé. [Illustration: _View of Loi Kiang Dow from the Meh Teng._ ] The panorama of hills stretching from north to west was magnificent. Towering thousands of feet above the plain, they seemed to be the remains of the great arm of a plateau separating the sources of the Meh Teng from the upper waters of the Meh Ping. The plateau had been gashed across by the hand of time, and now formed an intricate maze of partially precipitous and apparently isolated hills. Six miles distant, due north, was the great spur which once connected the plateau with Loi Chaum Haut, and through which the Meh Ping has broken its way to the Zimmé plain. Over the head of the spur, near its junction with the body of the hill from whence it springs, appeared the precipitous head of Loi Kiang Dow, here 16 miles distant. A little to the south of west a great valley extended as far as the eye could reach, in which lie many ruined cities, Ken Noi, Muang Hâng, Muang Kong, Muang Keut, and others whose names are now forgotten. The Meh Teng rises in Loi Ken Noi, a range of hills that, springing from Loi Too-ey, stretches southwards, separating the affluents of the Salween from those of the Meh Ping. The Meh Ping rises in the armpit formed by the junction of these two hills, and its head is separated from that of the Meh Teng by the broken chain of hills called _Loi Lin Koo_, of which Loi Kiang Dow is the monarch, rising head and shoulders above the rest. [Illustration: _View of hills north-west of the Zimmé plain from the Meh Teng._ ]