tribes just referred to, exact a heavy black-mail from their more civilised kinsmen in the valleys below; and not content with this, they will at times swoop down in troops of sixty or seventy to waylay travelling parties, whom they plunder and put to death, or else make a raid on some village in their vicinity.
We had now reached the banks of the stream, and had to cross it to gain the village ; but the bridge here, which possessed the great merit— from an engineering point of view — of ex- treme simplicity, was about the most crazy, break-neck contriv- ance it has ever been my lot to see. The whole structure consisted of one or two poles of bamboo, stretched from bank to bank some twelve feet above the deep river. These elegant structures are the common property of the natives, and suffice for the purposes of trade and intercommunication in this region. They are understood to be rebuilt, or kept in repair, by the man who happens to break them, should he survive the acci- dent, or by the next comer should he not. Providence has supphed a bountiful stock of raw material for their construction, in the surrounding vale and along the river's bank. There we may see the boulders for new piers, and ratans growing in the thickets, wherewith, if need be, to bind the cross-poles to the piers, and there are bamboos everywhere.
About half a mile from Pau-ah-liau we passed beneath the spreading branches of the "Png-chieu' tree, as the natives term it, whose roots spread along the ground in curious writhings and contortions, now forming an inviting chair, now a couch on which one might pass the hot nights with comfort ; or elsewhere a small shrine connected with the fetishism of the village. These spirit-shrines were encountered at the roots of many of the finest trees, and consisted commonly of one basement stone and four other slabs, together forming three sides and a roof. Within,
