The taxes are very light in this _Muang_, consisting of a basket of paddy for each basket sown; and the monopolies consist of only pork and tobacco. The monopolist takes a rupee and a half on each pig slaughtered for ordinary use, and one rupee if it is killed for spirit-worship; on tobacco he takes a quarter of a rupee on each hundred tobacco-plants. There are no spirit, opium, or gambling farms in the district; the people being addicted to none of these vices. A tax of ten rupees is levied on the sale of an elephant, half of which is paid by the seller and half by the purchaser. Having thanked the governor for the information, we had the elephants loaded, and resumed our march. We shortly afterwards crossed the Meh Hau Prat (a stream 30 feet wide and 10 feet deep, with 1 foot of water), which drains the valley of Muang Ken. We then proceeded across several spurs from Loi Tat Muang Ken, and reached the Zimmé plain at 16 miles, near the village of Ban Hom Luang, in whose fields I halted to sketch the hills lying to the west of the Meh Ping, and to the south of the valley of the Meh Teng. From the village to Zimmé is one great rice-plain, containing numerous villages, and beautified by orchards and by flowering shrubs, notably the _Mai cha-lau_, which in parts gave the fields the aspect of gardens of standard rhododendrons. It soon became so dark that I had to close the survey for the night, and hurry on to Ban Meh Set, where I found my companions accommodated in the house of Noy Sing Kat, one of Dr M‘Gilvary’s converts, and was hospitably entertained by Cheen Tah, his wife, he being absent from the village. The house was full of small red ants, which got through our mosquito-curtains and made us pass a miserably restless night, not improved by the sound of a ceaseless downpour of rain. In conversation with Dr M‘Gilvary after dinner, he told me that women were very well treated amongst the Shans, quite as well as amongst the Burmese, and this is particularly noticeable in cases preferred by women against men in the courts; the woman’s word being taken as indisputable evidence. Child marriage is unknown in the country; divorces are very rare; marriage is a matter of choice, and not of trade; and the aged are respected by their relations and cared for.