have found a new place to settle in, and have felt no inclination to
undertake such a journey again to revisit their old home.

Being without a written character in which to preserve their
traditions, cut off from all civilizing influence of the outside world,
and occupied merely in growing crops enough to support themselves, the
recollection of their connection with their original ancestors has died
out. It is not then surprising that they should now consider themselves
a totally distinct race from the parent stock. Inter-tribal wars, and
the practice of slave raiding so common among the wilder members of the
Indo-Chinese family, have helped to still further widen the breach. In
fact it may be considered remarkable that after being separated for
hundreds, and perhaps in some case for thousands, of years, the
languages of two distant tribes of the same family should bear to each
other the marked general resemblance which is still to be found.

The hilly nature of the country and the consequent lack of good means
of communication have also naturally militated against the formation of
any large kingdoms with effective control over the mountainous
districts. Directly we get to a flat country with good roads and
navigable rivers, we find the tribal distinctions disappear, and the
whole of the inhabitants are welded into a homogeneous people under a
settled government, speaking one language.

Burmese as heard throughout the Irrawaddy valley is the same
everywhere. A traveler from Rangoon to Bhamo will find one language
spoken throughout his journey, but an expedition of the same length in
the hilly country to the east or to the west of the Irrawaddy valley
would bring him into contact with twenty mutually unintelligible
tongues.

The same state of things applies to Siam and Tong-king--one nation
speaking one language in the flat country and a Tower of Babel in the
hills (_loc. cit._, pp. 332-333).

CHAPTER XVII

GORALS AND SEROWS

Gorals and serows belong to the subfamily _Rupicaprinae_ which is an early
mountain-living offshoot of the _Bovidae_; it also includes the chamois,
takin, and the so-called Rocky Mountain goat of America. The animals are
commonly referred to as "goat-antelopes" in order to express the
intermediate position which they apparently hold between the goats and
antelopes