The Lawa women are the only natives in Indo-China whom I have seen wearing their hair parted in the middle, in the mode general amongst women in England a few years ago. Their hair is gathered up and tied in a knot at the back of the head, like that of the ladies amongst the Burmese and Shans. Unlike the Siamese and Zimmé Shans, the Lawa women wear upper clothing for decency’s sake, and not solely for the sake of warmth. Their dress consists of a short skirt reaching to their knees, and a black tunic having a darkred stripe on the outer edge. Some of the elder women wear a piece of cloth on their heads folded into a sort of turban. The nights were rapidly getting colder; at five in the afternoon the thermometer showed 70°, at six in the morning it had fallen to 38°. We had to sleep dressed in our clothes under our plaids to keep warm; and the men sat huddled up, chatting and toasting themselves by the fires, for many hours towards the morning. [Illustration: _View across the Meh Hto and Meh Laik valleys at 10.54 A.M. 15th February._ ] Leaving the Meh Hto, we ascended 1150 feet by an easy spur, through a nearly leafless forest of hill-eng and teak, to the top of Loi Kaung Hin—the Hill of the Stone-heap—so called from a cairn on its summit. Cresting the hill, we were again amongst the fragrant pine-forest. The air was deliciously cool, and the view was superb; I therefore decided to halt and sketch the country from an orchid-covered crag above a precipice several hundred feet in depth. Across the valleys of the Meh Hto, Meh Lyt, and Meh Sa Lin, nearly due north-east and distant 13 miles, we could see Loi Pwe, giving rise to numerous valleys. Between it and due north, on the slope of a great flat-topped spur in the valley of the Meh Tyen, lay the Lawa village of Bau Kong Loi, and beyond the Zimmé hills stretched away till lost in the haze. The whole country looked like a chopping sea of hills, in which it would be impossible, without actual survey, to settle the direction of the drainage. The main range was so cut up by cross-valleys that any one of the valleys I had not visited might drain either into the Meh Ping or the Meh Nium. After continuing for two miles along the crest of the hill, we descended to the Meh Tyen, and halted for the night on its banks in some rice-fields near the junction of one of its branches. Our camp was situated 131 miles from Hlineboay, and 2831 feet above the sea. The bed of the Meh Tyen is 20 feet wide and 6 feet deep, and is composed of boulders of quartz and granite. The following morning at six o’clock the thermometer stood at 36½°. The breeze as we ascended a spur, through the hill-eng and scanty pine-forest, to Bau Koke, chilled us to the bone. Bau Koke is a small catch-pool on the crest of the Bau plateau, 3400 feet above the sea, draining into the Meh Tyen.