In the village of Mukhel near which we passed, we saw a pear tree three or four hundred years old, and greatly venerated by the villagers. In the same village I saw a Naga cut another man's hair with a dao (sword). The operation was performed most dexterously and neatly, by holding the dao under the hair, and then slightly tapping the latter with a small piece of wood. The result was that the hair-cutting was as neatly accomplished as it could have been by the best London hair-dresser. I asked a fine young Naga why all his tribe wore a single long tuft of hair at the back? He at once replied, "To make the girls admire me," and added that without it, he should be laughed at. This is the only explanation I ever had of the curious fact that most of the Naga tribes wear a long tuft behind, like Hindoos. By the third week in January we had laid out the line of road. Thangal Major approved of most of it, but said, regarding the piece between Sengmai and Kaithemahee, "I will cut it as I promised, but who will ever use it?" I differed from him, as nothing could exceed the tortuous and hilly nature of the old road, running as it did across one succession of spurs and deep ravines, one of the most heart-breaking paths I ever went along. Within a month of its completion the old path was entirely deserted. My health was beginning to break down entirely. I had been very ill during and immediately after the Naga Hills Expedition, and during the last march I was laid up one or two days. My wife had long been a sufferer, but she did not like to leave me, and I did not like to leave Manipur while the frontier was disturbed and the Kongal case unsettled. However, now I felt that we both must have change, and our children also were of an age to go home. On my return from looking after the road, fresh complications awaited me. News came from Chattik of the Sumjok (Thoungdoot) authorities having again caused dissension and joined with another village in firing on a Manipuri piquet. This had led to reprisals on the part of the Manipuris, who attacked and drove out the enemy. All this was done without our relations with Sumjok being anything but strained, the act of hostility being unauthorised. The ill-defined nature of the frontier was such, that neither party could be said to be in the right or wrong. The Kuki, Chussad, and other frontier villages took advantage of the state of things to plunder the Tankhools, and the latter in their turn appealed to Manipur.