Our Karen mahouts had been replaced by Shans at Maing Loongyee. The Shans proved much more cruel drivers than the Karens. The latter seldom used the cruel-looking hammer-hook, or _ankus_, they all carry, but coax and talk to the elephants; whilst the Shans correct the slightest misdemeanour by a blow that draws blood, and seek for obedience solely by bullying the beasts. The drivers, both Shan and Karen, urge their elephants on by a continuous irritation of the creature’s ears with their toes, which are worked in an incessant pendulous movement at the back of them. They likewise assume all sorts of attitudes on the animal’s head. Squatting on one leg with the other dangling down, lolling over the bump on its forehead, straddle-legged, and side-saddle fashion, but for ever with one set of toes or the other, or both, titillating the brute’s ears. [Illustration: _Loi Pwe seen over a spur at 9.57 A.M. 15th February._ _Note._—<6° and <16° imply angles to the east of north, north being 0° and 360°—90° is east, 180° is south, and 270° west from the point whence they are taken. ] From the Meh Lai we ascended a small glen for a little more than a mile, and shortly afterwards entered a narrow defile, where we halted for a few minutes to allow 135 laden cattle and a drove of 40 pigs to pass. Leaving the defile, a magnificent panorama spread out before us. Looking west, the eye ranged over the spurs we had crossed since leaving the pass. To the north about eight miles distant, over the hills bordering the Meh Sa Lin valley, stood out clear against the sky the bald-headed and partly precipitous summit of Loi Pwe. Here was a chance, not to be lost, for taking sketches and photographs and fixing the lie of the country. Loi Pwe is the nucleus from which many of the spurs and minor ranges stretching into the valleys of the Meh Nium and Meh Laik have their origin. It is joined on to the Bau plateau by spurs some 15 miles in length, radiating in straight lines. Most of the hills in this region are approximately of similar elevation, their crests seeming to be the remains of a great rolling table-land eaten into valleys by centuries of erosion in the stream-beds. On remounting the elephant, the howdah, owing to the slackness of the girth, commenced to lose its equilibrium, and I should have been precipitated to the ground, a distance of 11 feet, if I had not stepped on to the head of the beast and saved myself from falling by clinging to the greasy perspiring mahout. I had presence of mind sufficient to pocket my watch and instruments, or they would have inevitably been ruined.