into the very hearts of the forests, and, adding insult to injury, nicknamed the dispossessed people snakes, monkeys, and devils, representing them in their history as only half human, and thus hoped, no doubt, to justify their ill-treatment of them. Here and there these aboriginal tribes are still to be found in fragments, as primitive to-day as they were when first the Aryan invaders pretended to mistake them for wild beasts and vermin. Thus, in the northeastern corner of India are the Nagas, the Snakes, a medley of small tribes without cohesion, or even the power of cohesion, professing allegiance, in this nineteenth century of ours, some of them to potentates long ago extinct, others to the Empire of Burmah. The authority of British India is, of course, gradually becoming familiar to them and, very gradually also, being admitted; but it is probable that when the Afghan hills have become as settled as the Punjab, and Zululand as commonplace as Natal, the Nagas will still be found cherishing those wild notions of aboriginal independence that have made their reclamation seem so hopeless.
How can they ever consent to the dry formalities of civilization and the reign of law so long as they believe that Shesh, the great serpent, lies coiled under their hills, — governing the upper earth through his snake-limbed lieutenants, and recording his impressions of terrestrial affairs by the lustre of a great gem, the kanthi-stone, which he has erected in insolent revenge to light up his subterranean kingdom when he was driven from the sunlight by the more powerful gods of the Aryans?
This Shesh is a reptile worthy of homage, and maybe accepted without hesitation and in defiance of all sea-
