Writers in the past have, as a rule, either ignored or maligned the Lhota. Captain Butler speaks of “the surly Lhota,” and Colonel Shakespear dismisses them as “uninteresting people with dirty persons and villages.” [67] They are reserved and do not readily open their hearts to a stranger, but they are not surly. Their sense of humour is well developed and they are always ready with a laugh, but, like all Nagas, they hate being laughed at and believe that misfortune or sickness is likely to fall upon anyone who is the object of derision. Though the tribe contains a few habitual criminals they are, on the whole, very honest. Petty theft is rare, and a man can leave his spear and cloth by the side of a village path knowing that he will find his property untouched when he comes to pick it up on his way home. In warfare they were probably no more cowardly than their neighbours, and when hunting tigers and other dangerous game they show extraordinary pluck. For an expedition they will supply carriers unequalled for steadiness and discipline by any other tribe. The standard of morals varies in a curious way from village to village, but the Lhota husband does not imitate the habitual unfaithfulness of the Ao, nor does he, like the Sema, boast of his immoralities and decorate the grave of a deceased Don Juan with a tally of his liaisons. Children as they grow up and marry leave their old parents to fend for themselves in what seems to us rather a heartless way, but at a pinch they are usually ready to help to support them. In this the Lhota stands midway between the Konyak, who regards it as one of his chief duties in life to live with and help his aged parents, and the Ao, who usually never thinks of supporting his old father or mother, and even if he does so turns him out at last to end his days in a miserable little hut, “lest he should defile the house by dying in it.” Towards animals the Lhota, like all Nagas, adopts a curiously inconsistent attitude. At times he will punish them cruelly as if expecting them to understand the difference between right and wrong. For instance, I heard of a Lhota who climbed a tree after a badly wounded monkey. The monkey clutched his hair, so he tore it loose and cut its hands off while it was still alive—“as a punishment,” he said. At other times animals are treated as if they were incapable of feeling pain. Frogs are often kept overnight with their legs broken to prevent their getting away, and old men look back with regret to the good old days when mithan at a sacrifice were beaten to death with sticks and the valuable hair of goats and dogs was plucked from the living animals. A remarkable trait in the Lhota character, wherein they differ from all other Nagas with whom I am acquainted, is the extraordinary readiness with which they commit suicide. Often the reason is trivial in the extreme. I have known a man hang himself because the elders of his