How much discomfort and suffering are caused, even in our own land, by rats, mice, snakes, flies, and mosquitoes! And the foreign missionary has these same pests, but in a more aggravated form. These are larger, more numerous, and in addition to them he has to cope with the white ants that in armies destroy his furniture, the scorpion, the centipede, the cobra, the tiger. The _inhabitants_ of Burmah next claim our attention. The Burmans belong to the Mongolian race, the characteristics of which are “long, straight hair; almost complete absence of beard, and hair on the body; a dark-colored skin, varying from a leather-like yellow to a deep brown, or sometimes tending to red; and prominent cheek-bones, generally accompanied by an oblique setting of the eyes.”[11] The Burmans are described by a modern writer[12] as “of a stout, active, well-proportioned form; of a brown, but never of an intensely dark complexion, with black, coarse, and abundant hair, and a little more beard than is possessed by the Siamese.” At the time of Mr. and Mrs. Judson’s arrival, the population numbered from six to eight millions. This included, however, not only Burmans, who are the ruling race, and dwell mainly in the larger towns and cities, but also several subject races—Shans, Karens, Kakhyens—half-wild people, who live in villages scattered through the jungles and along the mountain streams. These tribes have different habits, and speak a different language from the Burmans. They are related to the Burmans somewhat as the North American Indians are to us, being, perhaps, the original inhabitants of the country, and having been subjugated at some remote period of the past. It would seem that wave after wave of Mongolian conquerors had swept over the country from the North, and these tribes are the fragments of wrecked nationalities. Major Yule, in his “Embassy to Ava,” gives the following graphic description of the mental and moral traits of the Burmese: