The characters, as will be seen from the illustration, are decidedly simpler than Chinese. I had the good fortune to submit my MSS. when I was at Swatow (a couple of months later) to a learned Chinese scholar, who seemed greatly interested in them. He took them into his hands with devout reverence and care, as if they were of priceless value. He said that he had indeed seen such MSS. before, but that it was extremely rare: he at once said that it came from no Chinese source, but from aborigines in the north of Kweichow. When I asked if it were some hundreds of years old, he replied, “Oh! much older than that,” and stated that the numerals and certain other characters were the same as the Chinese script of three thousand years ago. One of the characters which he pointed out was that for the moon: My MS. gives [Illustration] Dr. Henry’s [Illustration] Chinese [Illustration] I have also compared my MS. with pages of Lolo writing published by Colborne Baber in the Geographical Society’s Supplementary Paper, 1882, and can find no exact correspondence between them. Surely it would be a most interesting study for some one to undertake, the more so that there is already a wealth of material lying ready to hand at the British Museum. The Lolo writing is also different from Chinese in that it is read in columns from left to right and the book begins at the same end as ours. It corresponds with the later Syriac mode of writing, and Dr. Henry suggests it may have had some connexion with the Nestorians, who were to be found in all parts of China from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries. S. R. Clarke mentions a spirit who controls the crops, and is called by the Lolos Je-so: the Christians suggested that this name be the one adopted for Jesus Christ, but it was not done. The above-mentioned theory would account for some of the Lolo practices and beliefs, which are otherwise very difficult to account for, such as their keeping the Sabbath every sixth day, when no ploughing is allowed to be done, and the women are not even allowed to sew or wash clothes on that day. Of course this does not apply to all Lolos, but only to some in Yünnan. They have also the remarkable crosses (as seen in the soul-carriers), and they believe in patriarchs who lived to abnormal ages, such as six hundred and sixty or nine hundred and ninety years, as in the Old Testament records, not to mention the stories of the creation and the deluge. Their name for Adam has the two consonants d and m, it is Du-mu. The patriarchs are supposed to live in the sky: the chief of them is called Tse-gu-dzih, and this patriarch is also a deity who opened the box containing the seeds of death; he thus gave suffering humanity the boon of death. He also caused the deluge.