t and friendly and the chief, accompanied by
four venerable men, brought a present of rice. I gave him two tins of
cigarettes and the natives returned to the village wreathed in smiles.

The garments of the Lutzus were characteristic and quite unlike those of
the Mosos, Lisos or Tibetans. The women wore a long coat or jacket of blue
cloth, trousers, and a very full pleated skirt. The men were dressed in
plum colored coats and trousers.

The natives said that monkeys (probably _Pygathrix_) were often seen when
the corn was ripe and that even yet they might be found in the forest
across the river. Heller spent a day hunting them, but found none and we
obtained only one new mammal in our traps. It was a tiny mouse (_Micromys_)
but the remainder of the fauna was essentially the same as that of the
Yangtze valley and the intervening country.

For three days we traveled down the Mekong River. Although the natives said
that the trail was good, we discovered when it was too late that it was too
narrow and difficult to make it practicable for a caravan such as ours. It
was necessary to continually remove the loads in order to lift them around
sharp corners or over rocks, and the _mafus_ sometimes had to cut away
great sections of the bank. Usually only six or seven miles could be
traversed after eight or nine hours of exhausting work, and we were glad
when we could leave the river.

The Mekong, on an average, is not more than a hundred yards wide in this
region and, like the Yangtze, the water is very green from the Tibetan
snows. The prevailing rock is red slate or sandstone instead of limestone,
as in the country to the eastward, and the sides of the valley are so
precipitous that it seems impossible for a human being to walk over them,
and yet they are patched with brown corn fields from the summit to the
water. Considering the small area available for cultivation there are a
considerable number of inhabitants, who have gathered into villages and
seldom live in isolated houses as in the Yangtze valley. Wherever a stream
comes down from the mountain-side or can be diverted by irrigating ditches,
the ground is beautifully terraced for rice paddys, but in other places,
corn and peas appear to be the principal crops. Very few vegetables, such
as turnips, squash, carrots or potatoes are raised, which is rather
remarkable, as they are so abundant in all the country between the Mekong
and the Yangtze rivers. In several places the